♪♪
-Hello, I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
City leaders are responding to new concerns about gun
violence and prostitution on Aurora Avenue North
by shutting down streets and potentially adding a new city
attorney to focus on the area.
How is this plan working?
Plus, what's next for Ballard after a light rail extension
promised to that neighborhood has been put on hold?
I'm talking with council members Bob Kettle and Dan Strauss
about these questions and the ones you're sending in too.
That's next on City Inside Out Council Edition.
- And we have to do this for the communities, not just
North Aurora by the way.
The gun violence impacts Rainier Beach, impacts the CID.
- You must put out a date for Ballard, no matter what
it is or how bad it is.
and I'm telling you, their ideas are very bad right now.
All that and more, coming up next on City Inside
Out, Council Edition.
♪♪
-Welcome once again to City Inside Out Council Edition right
here on the Seattle Channel.
Brian Callanan here with you and with me are two guests.
I have Councilmember Dan Strauss
representing District 6, which reaches out from
Magnolia, goes through Ballard, out to Green Lake
too. Councilmember Strauss chairs the Council's
Finance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments
Committee. Councilmember, thanks for being here.
-Thanks for having me, Brian.
We also have with us Councilmember Bob Kettle,
who represents District 7, also from Magnolia into downtown.
He also chairs the council's public safety committee.
Councilmember Kettle, good to see you too.
-Thank you for having me.
-Councilmember Strauss, I'm going to start with you
here because there's a lot of World Cup excitement
coming to Seattle right now.
You've got a big viewing party, pride celebration coming to
your district in late June.
A lot of excitement over Norway.
The Scandinavian roots of Ballard are showing there.
Sounds like a big celebration.
I was trying to ask at a district level first.
Is your district ready for what sounds like, well, it
is a pretty big World Cup party going on right now?
-We've been ready.
We're excited for the two watch parties.
There's one this Friday for the USA-Australia game
in Ballard Commons Park.
And then we will have the watch party on the 26th as well,
where we're going to close down the streets, bring in a huge TV.
And I'll also say, you know, Councilmember Kettle and I both,
we've reached a disagreement recently about Interbay.
I'm calling it the disputed territory.
Oh, dear.
because we have Ballard FC and Salmon Bay FC
playing at Interbay.
- The semi-pro clubs, yeah.
- And as well as I have a great love of Smith Cove Park
and all these other things, Councilmember Kettle hosts
office hours in Magnolia.
It's a fun dispute.
But I say that because Ballard has had
a youth soccer club since 1975.
That means that there are five generation of soccer fans
and players in our area, which is what makes the
Ballard FC, Salmon Bay FC excitement so electric.
And that has contributed directly to the excitement
that we're going to see at Ballard Commons Park this Friday
and in the, they call it, you know, Ballard Avenue, where
Old Ballard City Hall was.
That's where we're going to, just like Seafood Fest,
instead of having a stage, we're shutting down the
street to put in a big TV.
It's going to be a blast.
I hope everyone can come out.
-Thank you for that.
I want to go past the excitement
just a titch if I could.
Councilmember Kettle, I want to talk about your district,
which includes downtown, really the epicenter of what's
going on with World Cup here.
You had some disagreements with the mayor over
whether surveillance cameras should be used
around the stadiums as a public safety measure.
After a briefing with the FBI and the Seattle
Police, the mayor said she believed there were general
and credible threats, that was the phrase she used
to describe what was going on with public safety.
So she said she's going to turn these cameras on.
So I'm just trying to bottom line this for
our viewers if we could.
Should people go downtown if there are general and credible
threats to public safety?
What's the message you're trying to get across here?
-Yes, they should go downtown.
We put all these pieces in play.
You know, the last piece that was missing was
turning those cameras on.
And because of that, I think we have great coverage.
We have a lot of jurisdictions, federal, state, local, that
are working together to create a safe games set of
matches for the World Cup.
and I think we're ready.
I'm looking to get tickets myself.
I know that's hard.
But it's not just around the stadiums, by the way.
It's like Westlake Park, Pacific Place,
which is getting reimagined.
- There's viewing parties all over the place.
- Pacific Place has been reimagined as soccer central.
And so we have all these places.
The waterfront, of course, I was down there
as it started, the World Cup.
It was beautiful.
It was electric on the waterfront.
It was unbelievable.
And so I think we're in a good place
and being ready from a public safety perspective too.
- Okay, thank you.
Councilmember Kettle, I wanna stay with you
and I wanna keep talking about public safety if we could.
Let's talk about gun violence, prostitution on
Aurora Avenue North.
Those issues have been present there for years.
Shots fired in the North Seattle area
are actually down compared to last year,
but there was a spike in gun violence in May,
some high visibility shootings that led residents there
to organize a protest, and the city has responded.
The mayor is authorized shutting some streets down,
adding more police to patrol the area.
What impact is this new focus on Aurora Avenue going to have?
Because you mentioned at a recent press conference
you weren't overly confident that the city's
response would work.
Help us out here.
-Well, that lack of confidence comes from what we've
been seeing over the years.
We have like a little spurt of activity, and
then we kind of fall back.
Then we have a spurt of activity, and we
kind of fall back.
And so we have to have engaged leadership with
follow-up and follow-through, And we have to do this for
the communities, not just North Aurora, by the way.
The gun violence impacts Rainier Beach, impacts the CID.
The factors that impact North Aurora are also
present throughout downtown, Belltown, even in Ballard
and other locations, Lake City, around the city.
And we have to keep the focus on what we're doing
in terms of public safety.
And a lot of this is having compassion, but then also
the accountability piece.
And that's what's been missing, like on North Aurora.
And it's unfortunate because, you know, we pass a bill, the
implementation, the follow-up, follow-through, it's not there.
Or working with partnership with other entities,
the state and the county.
You have to have sustained efforts in
order to be successful.
-Is there something in particular that you can focus
on in terms of we need to get this right, we need to
follow through on this piece?
Anything you have your eye on there?
-Well, it's about having capacity.
You know, because this is a tricky area, and there's
a lot of dynamics, because part of this is I focus on
the men, as I call the demand signal, but on the women's
side, you have older women, but you have these minors,
these young women, and it's like, hey, we can't have this.
And so we have to have this kind of effort.
But to do this, you kind of have to have detectives.
You have to have these specialty units.
And they got depleted when everybody was thrown on patrol.
-And you're saying capacity.
You're talking about more officers.
-And so we need to reach these larger number of officers.
I'm talking about 1258.
I recognize in the budget there's some other numbers too.
But if we do that, then we could fill those units up, and then
we could be more proactive.
And we need to be on our toes, not on our heels.
And that allows us to be on our toes on North Aurora.
-Thank you for that.
And we're going to talk a little bit more about police
hiring later in the show.
I appreciate you bringing that up.
Councilmember Strauss, I want to draw you in here
with a question that speaks to public safety and the
budget, which you oversee as the Finance Committee Chair.
City Attorney Evans said at the same press conference here she
wants a new prosecutor to focus on Aurora Avenue who would use
ERPOs, extreme risk protection orders, to take guns away
from sex traffickers or pimps.
-The ERPO prosecutor that we've asked for is going
to help keep our community safe from gun violence.
If you are out threatening violence in our community, we
will use our ERPO prosecutor to take your gun away.
-So usually this kind of protection order is used
in domestic violence cases.
I'm going to put that to the side for a second.
I just wanted to ask, can the city afford to make a new
investment like this with a budget deficit that you well
know is north of $170 million?
-We can't afford to not make this investment.
This is critical that we make this investment.
You know, something that I really appreciate about
Councilmember Juarez is her dedication to
fixing the problems that we see on North Aurora.
I mentioned at the press conference I lived at
Motor Place in Aurora.
I lived half a block from Aurora just after they closed
down the Thunderbird Motel when these issues extended
all the way down to the Ship Canal Bridge.
As we've seen, and when I took office, these issues were
occurring as far south as 83rd.
the motel at 83rd and the motel at 87th had the nuisance
orders put forward on them.
And so you see us continuing to bite away
at addressing this issue.
What I really appreciated at the press conference is that we had
multiple levels of government.
We had the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.
We had the city attorney.
We had council members.
-We had Department of Transportation.
Yeah, yeah.
- The mayor showed up as well.
And something that City Attorney Evans said very clearly,
and I appreciate it, which is, if you are shooting
guns in our streets, if you are purchasing
humans as commodity, if you are engaging in criminal
activity on the streets where people are
raising their families, that through this coordination
with the Seattle Police Department,
the City Attorney's Office, the King County Prosecuting
Attorney's Office.
If you're running in our streets,
engaging in criminal activity on the streets
where people are raising their families,
the police are gonna arrest you, the attorneys are
gonna prosecute you, and you're gonna be
brought to justice because gun violence
is preventable.
These issues we can solve for.
And I was really heartened to see all these levels
of government come together, but we can't lose
sight of the fact that this is also occurring
in the Central District, Rainier Valley
and Rainier Beach.
And so this isn't the end, this is the beginning.
-Just to follow up on that protection order idea,
is that going to work?
I'm thinking about your capacity issue again.
Laws are only as good as their enforcement.
Talk to me about this plan with these emergency
protection orders and if that's going to work.
-I think it could.
I don't have the complete answer for you.
-It's a pretty novel concept.
So we really don't know.
-To that point, is you look at the problem set and you analyze it.
It's like, hey, how do we attack this?
How do we address this?
And then you look at what we can do.
So, for example, we had our overnight premises or businesses
Bill that really cut gun violence on the south side.
Because that gun violence between 2 A.M.
And 6 A.M.
And we look at that.
We look at chronic nuisance property, as Councilmember
Strauss mentioned, which at one point was not even
being used by a city attorney, to my great frustration.
But I'm so very happy that City Attorney Evans is using it.
So, hey, how can we use that in combination?
So if we can use ERPO, if we can use that in combination
with other ordinances that can kind of drive a
solution here, I'm up for it.
It is different, so we'll see.
-Okay. Let me take it one step further.
Or, yeah, would you— -May I jump in there?
And this is a fun fact you might not know about me.
When I worked for Senator David Frockt, I was one of
three people that worked on the initial bill of that—of the
extreme risk protection order.
So, as Senator Frockt, I worked for him and Adam Hall.
And what we have found is that this protection order has
saved lives countless times.
There are famous people that it has been reported about in the
news that have had their lives saved with extreme
risk protection orders.
It is a really good program, and I think that it
will be applicable here because it does two things.
One, it says if you are a danger to yourself or others, you go
through due process to have your firearm rights reviewed.
And if you are engaging in behavior such as sex trafficking
and using these weapons to imprison human beings
then that's not something that's going to work for us and
using the due process to ensure that constitutional
rights are maintained Is the way that we are able
to address the situation and ERPOs are one and I
think it's a great tool. -Okay, we'll see.
-And to add to this point, again, we'll see, but the DV
aspect of domestic violence, you could argue the way the
pimps manipulate the women, the girls, that it creates a similar
And so hopefully, you know, this can be added to the mix
and then we can take advantage But we have to implement it and
we have to have the follow-up and the follow-through.
-Let's talk about some of the other legislation the council's
working on here, including some some emergency legislation to
allow Seattle's police chief to temporarily shut down streets
as a public safety measure.
Council Member Juarez sponsoring this ordinance.
I did invite her on the show.
She said she couldn't make it.
Council Member Kettle, do you support this idea?
What does it mean to give the chief
this kind of authority over street closures?
- It goes to our overnight premises establishments bill.
It also goes to chronic nuisance properties.
So I support it.
One could argue the mayor could just do it herself.
You don't really need it, but on the ground,
Chief is working these issues very detailed,
and he can work with the precinct captains,
and he has a philosophy of really empowering
the precinct captains, and so with that knowledge
and then working with SDOT Director Brady,
yes, they can take action.
And by the way, it's better to do it beforehand,
before a bullet goes through a house,
and instead of going a couple feet over a bassinet,
it could kill somebody.
-Yeah, that was a terrible incident
that happened in the community.
Do you worry at all that it creates a sort of pretext
for anybody hanging out in that area could be arrested?
I wanted to make sure I asked you that question.
-No, I don't.
I recognize that this comes up in different ways
for other bills, too, and we need to be...
It's kind of like what we've done with the
technology program.
We have our mission in terms of what we're trying to do, but
then we build in protections.
And so you can build in different pieces to ensure
that we are focused on what needs to be focused on
and not getting distracted with issues on the side like
you're kind of mentioning there.
-Yeah, okay.
Thank you for that.
Councilmember Strauss, just some quick thoughts here on
this legislation to allow the chief to shut down streets.
Is this kind of ordinance needed?
I guess it could be used in Ballard or
any neighborhood here.
What do you think about it?
-I don't know that it's needed, but clarity is always helpful.
-Okay, okay.
By which you mean you'd like the chief to
have that kind of role?
What's your thought there?
-In these times and spaces, we've seen different streets
and alleys in Belltown and in downtown already closed
for public safety issues.
And that's why I don't believe that legislation is needed.
and I would say that without that clarity,
it creates a gray space.
And when you have repeated, when you are engaging
in the same problem set time and time again,
rather than having a case-by-case basis decision,
it's good to have clarity.
And that's what the bill does.
But also, I think that the bill came from a frustration
that neighbors were not being heard
and that there was action not being taken swiftly.
And so this is adding clarity.
It's being very clear that these closures do need to happen.
So it's a process for us.
-And it's best to do it through the chief and with the
Director Brady, in this case, rather than people doing
things on their own because you don't know exactly.
- And that was happening in that neighborhood.
People are setting up their own barriers.
-Yeah, if residents and constituents are doing their own
thing. We're in a bad place and
So we need to avoid that so again
We are similar, but we also see the need for it in clarity on
door the ability to be proactive. -Yeah, and I'm gonna go a step
further to say that I have a lot of residents in my district
asking for these types of street
safety measures in places that gun violence is not occurring.
And SDOT routinely tells me that there's not the funding
to do it.
And so then I ask about the Vision Zero
work. Those funds are only allowed to be used
on arterials.
And I have, maybe not quite in my
district, it's still up in D5, but there are folks that
put out their own implements to slow traffic down, and I'm
feeling like SDOT's not hearing the residents, that they want
their residential streets slowed down.
So it's beyond just gun violence.
I think everyone wants to feel safe on their
street, and we have to address the gun violence,
but SDOT also needs to be more responsive
to everyday residents.
- When you look at the public safety surveys that come
back, yes, people are concerned about gun violence,
but actual just safety for pedestrians up
there is off the charts.
People are really calling for that.
-Teenagers do have driver's licenses.
-True story.
I had one, and I was a teenager on the streets, too.
-Don't even bring up e-mobility scooters.
-Okay, okay, okay.
Thank you for that.
I really appreciate that.
A lot of people have been talking about what's
going on on Aurora.
Councilmember Strauss, back to you for a question
about Sound transit.
Here we go.
So the plan to have a light rail extension go to
Ballard was put on hold or maybe deferred a few weeks ago.
I'm not sure what the right nomenclature is there, but it
doesn't sound like light rail is coming to Ballard anytime soon.
You serve on the Sound Transit board.
Can you break down what's happening with the
Ballard Link extension and what Seattleites can expect, please?
-Yeah, several months ago, Sound Transit staff killed the idea of
the ability to get to Ballard.
They provided three options.
None of them prioritized ridership, and none
of their three staff options got to Ballard.
What we saw in the chair's package that was
voted on, I voted no,
is that County Executive Zahilay was successful
in getting us the funding to design all the way to Market
Street on the Ballard line.
That move by Executive Zahilay, with my support and
all of us working together, is what is keeping
Ballard alive today.
So Ballard's not dead yet.
It is on life support.
We need every viewer to reach out to Sound Transit
board members directly and share the importance
of getting the extension that provides new ridership
opportunities to new riders in the Seattle area.
The downtown tunnel is redundant for Seattleites.
It is needed by the region.
It's a nice-to-have for Seattle.
Ballard and West Seattle are a must-have for Seattleites,
and they are a nice-to-have for the region.
And so over the course of the next six to nine months,
we'll see a number of decisions that we will need to make,
and there's gonna be a calendar, and sign up for my newsletter
if you wanna stay informed.
But all this to say, through that design work,
we have, and I've heard 2028 or 2032,
as the date in which we need to have full funding
to stay on track.
Yeah. And so one of the amendments that I put forward
and was passed is a transparency measure says to Sound
Transit, you must put out a date for Ballard, no matter
what it is or how bad it is.
And I'm telling you, their ideas are very bad right now.
Like, it's not good.
But it's better to be transparent and say, we are
working to find cost-cutting measures and funding options.
And through that work, we will be able to bring
that date closer in time.
And that is the transparency that Sound Transit needs
to rebuild the trust that they have lost with so
many people in our area.
-Thank you.
Councilmember Kettle, I want you to respond
to some online chatter that might be a little too
hot for Seattle Channel.
Here we go.
If those fiery words sound familiar, they came
from one of your press releases a few weeks ago.
-I was going to say I recognize that.
-Yeah, that might have been you.
I wanted you to explain your concerns to viewers.
-Well, two things.
Kind of like the leadership that Councilmember Juarez
is showing in North Seattle, nobody can match the
leadership and the involvement of Councilmember
Strauss on Sound Transit, and particularly related to
the Ballard Regional Center.
And I have great frustrations with Sound Transit and
with the state generally, because the state, on one
hand, through Puget Sound Regional Council, you know,
the comprehensive plan.
We've created a regional center.
Sound Transit's mission is to connect regional centers.
Regional centers are connected except for Ballard.
And as I said many times, land use and transportation are
two sides of the same coin.
So we are going to create problems with the densification
of Ballard without proper transportation links,
public transit, between that regional center and
the rest of the system.
And that's really frustrating to me.
-Councilmember Strauss, we had a question come in
from one of our viewers.
Eric wants to know this.
Is that solution something the board is looking into?
Some thoughts about what's next here, I guess.
-We have to look at all of the options.
And that was part of the motion that I worked on with Executive
Zahilay saying, and that's one
next six to nine months, is when Sound Transit will engage with
these ideas from the community about how do we save money.
The D.C.
Metro system is a metro.
We have a light rail, technical differences.
But when you look at D.C.
Metro, all of the stations are the same.
They're not glamorous.
And they're super functional.
Sound Transit has a reputation for overbuilding,
overengineering.
Seattle stations are not going to be as nice as
the Federal Way stations.
And we need to take these ideas from the community
because not getting to Ballard is not an option.
-Thank you very much for that.
Councilmember Kettle, I'm going to jump back to you
for another big issue here.
The Seattle Police Department recently put out a report
that shows the plan to increase hiring at the SPD
has run into a complication.
Fewer veteran officers are leaving the department, or
separating as it's called, and that's putting a strain
on the hiring budget.
The report says this.
The report went on to say that the
SPD will, if necessary, slow down hiring so
it doesn't go past its budget.
The city authorized some big raises for SPD
last year to make them the highest paid officers in
the state.
I know that was important to you and
it's important for you to hire more people too.
What are your thoughts about this?
-What's our mission?
You know, what's the priority.
You know, if we don't have a safe base
in our city, all these other things fall off.
And so we have to, you know, build
up those numbers.
We're supposed to be at 1,400
plus. You know, we're not even, you know, on the ground
we're not even hitting a thousand yet.
And so we have...
-When you say 1,400, where's that number come from?
Well, it's come up over the years,
and also like with Mayor Harrell and what we've
and also like with Mayor Harrel and what we've
adopted you know as a council in terms of what we're
looking at and so the hard part...
-Fewer than a thousand now keep going...
-Yes well in terms of you know on
the streets yeah this goes to other it's really
complicated in a sense of you know we've been bringing
on and there's the training piece and getting that
really smooth and there's different pieces to this
but you know what this is actually in some ways
reflection of a good story because we put in our our
Our plan, our strategic framework plan.
Pillar one was SPD staffing.
You know, it had pieces like from the labor, but
It had more than that.
We had, you know, bills to encourage and for those to stay
And also for people to bring— brought on.
But here's the other thing, too: leadership.
The council and city government showed leadership.
I had somebody who was retirement eligible.
He says, "You know, sir, I'm staying because
Of what you've done."
And not just me, my colleagues have gone to the stations,
gone to roll calls and showed that, hey, because anybody
wants to be supported by their boss and by the community and
upper management, if you will.
And that's what we got a nice raise.
And so but it's not just that.
And we have to work through these issues because at the
end of the day, that's what we need going back to North Aurora.
And it's not just North Aurora.
We need we need bike teams in Belltown.
You know, if we really want we need to be at that
fourteen hundred number.
Okay, if we really want to address these pieces and I
know it's expensive, but you know, what's the alternative?
What's the alternative?
Yeah, you look at what's happening
in business downtown?
Okay. Yeah, so we should not you know
cut our nose or spit in our face. -Got it, Councilmember Strauss,
I know this is gonna be a hot issue during the budget
Deliberations that come up this fall the mayor is
asking departments across the city to prepare for five
to ten percent reductions. Will the SPD be getting cut
and I know some people are gonna be asking that too?
-You know, all departments are being asked to go
through this exercise.
It's a common exercise that every mayor has engaged in.
It is an exercise.
Their budget isn't built until August.
What I said directly to the chief of police: Do
not slow down on hiring.
Do not—if you are having to make decisions now because of
this exercise, you must keep And—
-Even if it pushes them past their hiring budget?
we have to keep hiring new officers.
If we want to be effective in North Aurora,
if we want to be effective in Rainier Beach
and Rainier Valley, if we want to be effective
in the Ballard Industrial Area where we're seeing
organized criminal activity, this is what it takes.
It takes, and we know that the newer officers
that are coming on, we are now the highest paid
police department in the state, which means that we are
recruiting good officers.
If we want the future of policing to be
what we want it to be, we have to hire these new
officers, and we can't slow down because that timeline
is so protracted.
-I want to touch on something else that's
happening in the city.
The mayor's plan to increase the amount of enhanced
shelter units in Seattle.
These are units that not only offer tiny homes,
but pretty intense human services, too.
Councilmember Strauss, you were at an event a few weeks ago
celebrating the opening of such a facility.
brought up an example for Ballard, from Ballard,
I should say, where you had a pilot program in
2023. I thought this was very interesting when you
spoke about this.
It got people off the street,
I should say, but a number of those people failed
out, as you put it, because they needed more care.
I wanted to take it next level.
Are you confident this new enhanced shelter
program that's getting rolled out here is going to do a
better job than what you saw in your district three years ago?
-Let me add some nuance to what you just said.
We had a list of 38 people.
-That's right.
-We couldn't find one.
So we had 37 people that we got into shelter.
Of those, all but three got this enhanced type of shelter.
For those that went into the enhanced shelter, they
stayed in shelter and were successful at stabilizing and
addressing some of their issues.
For the three people that we didn't have room for at
the enhanced shelter, they went to a tiny home that
had a front desk clerk.
-I see.
I see.
-That had somebody managing the space, but not much more.
And those three people failed out.
-I see.
-And so what I was saying, I don't need any more tiny
homes with front desk clerks.
When you look at the data of how many shelter beds we
have online in that area, in that part of the
spectrum, compared to the enhanced shelter,
It explains why people who are just down and out
on their luck, we have been effective at getting them inside
because they are in these tiny homes.
For the people who need enhanced services,
they are the ones that are still left on the streets
because we are not providing a place for them
to get off the streets too because they require a
higher level of care.
- Okay, thank you.
Council Member Kettle, we're getting close to wrapping up
here, but I do wanna talk about this.
This is a shelter that's in your district.
How is it going with this?
your thoughts about where this is going to go in the future.
-Right, in disputed territory.
-Okay, all right, just so you know, just so you know.
Here we go.
-Yes, in Inner Bay.
And, you know, I support it in the sense that we have
to build the capacity again, you know, have this option, and
to learn the lessons learned, like with the Salmon
Bay Village just up the road near Ballard Bridge,
which was a combination RV and tiny home,
where they put in all these pieces regarding security,
outreach to community.
We have a process right now with the council regarding
neighborhood engagement and mitigation plans.
So these service providers have a baseline in terms of
what they need to be doing with their neighborhoods
and the engagement and the mitigation, which is important.
And so a lot of those have been built into the
Armory Array location at the shelter location.
It's a little different.
It's not a tiny home.
And so we'll see.
But part of it is, to Council Member Strauss' point, you
have to have this combination.
And, you know, and by the way, we have to have a
combination across the board.
This morning, I was at the Matt Talbot Center, which
is a sober living option.
So we need more sober living options to go with the
other options that we have.
And by having this, that really sets up success
for the next stage, going to what Councilmember
Strauss was saying.
-Okay. Thank you very much.
That's all the time we have for now.
A big thanks to Councilmember Kettle, Councilmember Strauss.
Thanks a lot for joining me.
-Thanks for having us.
-I'm Brian Callanan and we'll see you next time on Council Edition
here on the Seattle Channel.
♪♪