♪♪
-Good afternoon and welcome.
We are delighted here at Seattle University
to be hosting Seattle Mayor Katie B. Wilson
and King County Executive Girmay
Zahilay for our Spring Conversations program.
Again, I'd like to thank you both
so much for the time
that you are giving us and for being here
and being game for this this whole bit here.
Seated next to me is Ari Winter,
graduate student in our public administration program here.
And Ari has a great question to lead us off.
-I want to initially start off with telling you both
you can jump in on each
other's questions at any time because we want this
to feel like a natural conversation.
So please feel free to do that.
Starting off with you, Executive Zahilay,
you represent a whole county, not just its more progressive
center of the city of Seattle.
How do you lead regionally,
mindful of how different parts of your constituency respond
to progressive politics and governmental action?
-It's a really great question because before this job
I was a council member on the King County Council
and I represented the district where I was raised.
So the district where I was representing is
all the neighborhoods
where I learned how to ride a bike and where I
went to high school and middle school
and elementary school.
And so I would just go up
and down MLK or Rainier Avenue and see my district
and also my home.
And a lot of people think the same way.
It's a diverse place, but diverse within reason.
Right.
And then once I got to this job,
I got in a car
one day
and I had a meeting
in Federal Way and then I had a meeting in Duvall.
Anybody here know where Duvall is?
You ever heard of it?
I was in the car for like, 2 hours
and I was still in King County.
So it was pretty shocking.
And, you know, you walk into a room and
people look different than they do in district two
or dress different.
And there are more rural areas.
There are farm towns.
I know you're doing your capstone on farmers.
And so it's just a much, much different and diverse region.
We have 39 different cities, We have unincorporated areas,
we have suburban, we have urban,
we have farm towns, we have forests and so much.
And so step
one is the same thing
that I did as a council member,
which is
have boots on the ground, go out there,
meet people, earn trust, figure out what their issues
are, and really understand them from the perspective
of a human being and not from whether they are a Democrat
or a Republican or have this label or that label.
And the most shocking part to me has been
how similar people's issues are, right?
Everybody has a diversity of issues.
Of course, if you get down to the
nitty gritty, there are differences
based on city or area or the type of region.
But at the end of the day,
it feels like everybody's issues boil down to
they want to feel safe
and they want to be able to afford stuff.
That's how I summarize total.
They want to feel safe
and they want to be able to afford stuff.
And that takes a different shape and looks different
depending on where you go.
But once you understand that at the end of the day,
this roomful of people,
whether they're in Duvall or Shoreline or Federal Way,
they want to make sure that when they send their kids
to school, that their kids are safe,
that when they go to the grocery store, they can be
they can afford their food,
that they have a good job where one job is enough.
Those types of issues, once you start to understand that,
it gives you the grounding in the humanity of people.
And then from there you get to know them
specifically by showing up where they are.
-Mayor Wilson,
You have your own balancing act
to represent your constituents in the city of Seattle
in your first few months as mayor.
How have you navigated political divisions and
expectations about progressive policies across the city?
-Yeah, I mean, that's a big question,
and I think a lot of what the executive
just said really resonates with me, right?
Even though Seattle maybe has a stronger kind of
progressive politics identity than the county as a whole,
that masks an incredible amount of diversity
right across
kinds, including political diversity,
ideological diversity,
and just
people in institutions coming from a
lot of different perspectives.
And so, you know, I came into office
obviously running as an unabashed progressive,
but at the same time
recognizing that as the mayor of the city,
right, and kind of representing the city in that sense,
I really had work to do, building
relationships kind of across the spectrum.
And so,
you know,
I put a lot of work in in these first few months
building relationships,
especially with folks in the business community.
And I think that some people in the business community
probably started out
with some pretty low
expectations of me
and maybe were happy that I was just
willing to sit down and have a conversation. Right.
And and so I think the attitude
that I've tried to come at this with is like,
look, we're not necessarily
going to agree on everything, and that's fine.
But I really want to establish those relationships
where we can work together
on the things where we have alignment
and then sometimes we disagree,
but that doesn't explode the whole relationship.
And I think that,
you know, regardless of who I'm talking to,
whether that's people,
you know, on the left or people
on the kind of business,
I'm not going to call them the right. But,
you know, I think that's just
an important they don't like to
be careful of labels.
But I really you know,
I think what the executive said about
we're in this moment
where people want to feel safe
and they want to be able to afford to live in this city.
And I think that that really resonates with me.
That's what I heard
so strongly
during the campaign as I talked to
people in neighborhoods across the city,
whether that's residents, small business owners.
And and so I really think there's a lot of common
ground there.
And that's what I found
in those conversations with people
kind of across the political spectrum.
There's a lot of alignment on
we need to make progress on the homelessness crisis.
We need to make progress on public safety.
We need to make progress on affordability.
And so I'm really looking for those areas of alignment.
And, you know, you think about affordability, right?
And like initially, I think of that
from the point of view of someone
like myself, a renter,
someone who wasn't making a lot of money
prior to this job, and, you know, a mother.
Right, trying to afford the cost of childcare.
But that's really a problem for businesses, too, right?
If you're trying to run a business
and the people that you're employing
can't afford to live in the city and haven't
or having to commute a long way,
it's really hard to attract and retain a great workforce
when we have this affordability crisis.
So I think when you begin to draw out those connections
and figure out what are the things
that we can really make progress
on, that people want to see progress on across the board.
There's just a lot of ground there.
And, you know, again, that's not glossing over
the fact
that there are some deep differences
and that there are going to be issues
where I do things that not everyone is happy with.
And that's already happened.
But but I think it's really important to keep
to keep in mind that commonality
and that kind of big work that we can do together.
Because, I mean, people
across the board want to see Seattle succeed.
-So still sort of refining the terms here.
And speaking of what flavor of of progressivism
are we talking about, as you well know, Seattle, Boston,
New York, part of a trend toward progressive policies.
But in longtime ultra progressive San Francisco
Mayor Daniel Lurie, very popular.
He changed
course and leads is, he would say, more moderately
than his predecessor on things
like street disorder, drug markets and encampments.
What do you think
of sort of the difference between the progressive cities
and what Daniel Lurie is doing?
Are there
any lessons that he has served up for the city of Seattle?
-I mean, I think and I'm not I haven't done
like a deep dive on all of those cities.
But I think if you look at some of the approach
that Daniel Lurie has taken in San Francisco
and then you look at
the approach that Michelle Wu has taken in Boston
on specifically issues related to homelessness
and kind of related issues of public safety,
I'm not sure there's a big difference there.
So, I mean,
I think that there are I think we're in a..
-So is it more the way he is describing it?
-Yeah.
-And I think you're making him do 71% approval. -Right.
And I think there might be some differences.
I mean, you know, Boston and San Francisco,
I think we're starting
from different baselines in terms of like the acuity
of the homelessness crisis and everything.
But you know, I do think I think we're in a moment.
And, you know, I
before deciding to run for office, right,
I wrote
a piece for The Stranger, which was called, you know,
“Where the Left Went Wrong on Homelessness.”
And so I think we are
in a little bit of a moment of of kind of critical self
assessment on some parts of the left
in terms of the approach
that we've taken to homelessness and
some parts of public safety.
And in my mind, that's not like we're going
to become less progressive.
It's more about we want to be effective.
We want to figure out
what is the best thing that we can do to help
the folks who are struggling
on our streets with homelessness,
with substance use disorder, with mental illness.
And so it's really about what works, right?
Because ultimately we want, you know, move forward.
That's what we're talking about here
as as the president said.
And and so it's really about like what, you know,
what should be a progressive approach
to these issues, not about kind of moving away
from a progressive approach in my mind.
-Executive Zahilay,
I see you shaking your head there,
reminding folks San Francisco is also a county.
So what's your take?
Is there something that San
Francisco is doing that you think would work in
the rural parts of King County or suburban cities, King
County in general,
something that's that you find as a takeaway
that would be helpful as you approach
some of the problems facing King County?
-I see two different worlds in our region
and maybe even our city
where it feels like there's the hyper politicized class
and then there
are the everyday people
who are not really politically engaged,
and that's a broader community.
And when I look at the broader community,
there doesn't seem to be an appetite for labels
or I'm going to vote for the Progressive
or I'm going to vote for the moderate.
They're just like, Who's going to solve these problems?
Who's just going to help me live every day?
Who is going to
I don't care what the ideology is behind it,
who is going to reduce gun violence,
who is going to reduce street disorder?
Who's going to help people
who are unhoused get into shelter?
It is just the I don't care what your label
is, who's going to solve the problem.
-I'm sorry.
-But speaking of labels, you have the same label on a
on an initiative of yours “Breaking the Cycle”
that Daniel Lurie has.
-Yeah. Yeah.
So I agree with the mayor, which is just that
I think people just want to see the person who is
solving problems,
not just on a large, abstract long timeline.
You know, part of
maybe where the quote unquote left
wing wrong
that the mayor was talking about is
you can't tell people
we're going
to solve the homelessness crisis 40 years from now
when the housing crisis is solved. Right.
You have to say,
yes, we're going to
address that long term problem and we have to get people
the services they need and we have to
have some answer for street disorder.
And it's a both and approach.
And I think that comes
from a perspective of I'm here to solve problems
and not just to, you know, signal virtue
to a base or whatever it might be.
So I think that's that's part of it as well.
-And I would just add, like, I think
I think
if you look at the way this debate
and to some extent the policy policy
to some extent policy, but really just the at least
ideological debate has played out over the last ten years.
I think
we've gotten into this situation where you have
a little bit of a caricature of like a left
wing progressive position and then a kind of right
wing law and order position where the caricature
of the left wing position is
almost is kind of
libertarian, like just like let people die in the streets.
You know, just just enable them
with drug paraphernalia and,
you know, maybe offer them shelter,
but don't force anyone to do anything.
And don't even really pay attention
to the drug crisis and just let it go on.
So that's like the caricature of the left wing position,
the caricature, the right wing
position is like, crack down, throw them all in jail.
There are consequences.
You know,
you just have to make it
really uncomfortable to be homeless
and then people will solve their problems.
And so, you know, and surprise,
neither of those approaches actually works.
And so I think what what I am trying to get to
as as a progressive is what is going to work
and what is an approach
that is really rooted in compassion
and respecting the dignity of every human being
and also recognizing those big systemic issues
that have led to the crisis that we're in from,
you know, the housing crisis
and historic levels of income and wealth inequality
and like all of these kind of root causes.
And what is the actual realistic pathway
that is going to address this crisis?
And to me, that is a progressive thing to do.
And, you know, I think I don't want to endorse like
Daniel Leary's entire approach in San Francisco.
I probably have some differences
of opinion with him.
But I think,
you know,
there is probably some overlap there, right,
in the approach that that that we're taking.
-Can I just add one thing to that?
Just to build off the wisdom of what the mayor is saying,
I think the correct approach is never going to just be
all the ideas from one wing of a party or the other.
There's going to be a grab bag of what works and waiting
and trying and failing.
And I would like to give an example of that,
if that's helpful.
So, you know, a couple of months ago
there was that horrible shooting outside of Rainier
Beach High School where two students were killed
and we as King County, invited some of the Rainier Beach
High School students to King County to receive
an award for winning the state basketball title.
And as part of that, we had some of the students
come forward
and share some of their ideas
on what are some of the solutions
that they want to see around their school.
And some of those students got up and said things
that are not cleanly progressive, right?
Some of them stood up and said,
I want more police around the school.
That's what they said.
-Yeah. -It's not the clean progressive answer.
-Also asked for the surveillance cameras.
-Yeah, yeah. That's what they and like.
We posted that I posted that video
and when I tell you how many DMS I got from people
who want the clean progressive answer
telling me “delete this, you're parroting right
wing talking points. How dare you elevate this!”
And I'm like, “You are talking about the demographic
that is most at risk for being shot and killed
and you're saying erase their voice
because they said something that doesn't cleanly align
with the thing that you want to hear.”
That's absurd, that's super frustrating.
And so absolutely, you have to listen and partner
with the people who are most impacted.
And that's not always going to look like the the
the clean virtue of progressivism.
(applause)
-I want to jump
I want to jump
back into the homelessness conversation with you
and ask about King County, because the county declared
a regional homelessness emergency a decade ago
and millions of dollars or more have been spent trying
to resolve those issues.
And I'm wondering
what do we have to show for those dollars?
-So I think that we have a lot more work
to do on homelessness. At a high level,
there is an issue of no matter how effectively
you respond to the people who are currently unhoused,
the number of people entering homelessness is still
happening at a high rate.
So yes, a lot of money is being spent
and yes, also people are being removed
from homelessness and into housing
and the scale of the production of the response
is nowhere near
the scale of the problem
and the scale of the growth of the problem.
And so every year,
every two years, the Regional Homelessness
Authority does a point in time count to see how many people
are living not just unhoused but unsheltered, unhoused
meaning they are literally living outside in the street.
And if you asked it
last two years ago when it was last done, it was 16,000.
Two years before that was 14,000.
Two years before that it was 12,000.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the number comes out
this year and it breaks 20,000.
I, I don't know that for sure.
I haven't seen that, but I wouldn't be surprised
because that number of people who continue to be priced out
and impacted by all of the overlapping crises of
the housing crisis and the behavioral health
and violence and trauma, that's stuff keeps going up.
And so we need more roofs over people's heads,
we need more services,
and we need some accountability
with you doing the things that are most effective.
-Mayor Wilson,
your signature issue is emergency shelter and housing.
You've set an ambitious goal, 4000 units
in the next four years, 1000
this year, and 500 before the CFA tournament in June.
The Seattle Times today reported that you're running
into challenges with citing pricing
and cost of wraparound services.
How are you going to meet these goals
with those challenges?
-We are working on it every single day.
So yeah,
I have not read that Seattle Times
article yet, but yeah, no, I mean we have,
you know,
the team in my office
and in the various departments in the city
that are involved in
this work have been working really hard
over the last few months to figure out
how do we accelerate a process that,
first of all, really happens, right?
I mean, I think The Seattle Times
also reported last year that the city had added a net
13 units of shelter over the last four years.
So we are really,
really aiming high in terms of ramping things up.
And so we've done a ton of work
to figure out how we accelerate
opening a site from what normally can take, you know,
nine months to a year or more into a few months.
And so we've identified a bunch of sites
and we've been working with, you know, property owners.
In some cases, these are private property,
in some cases public
and with service providers to figure out
what we need to do to get those sites online.
So we're moving and we'll see what we can get
to before the World Cup.
But I think the utility of establishing
an ambitious goal like that
is really rallying everyone around it.
And not just people at the city, right.
And the service providers, but also the business community.
Right.
We've got some
philanthropic support coming for
at least one of these sites.
And then just everyone out in the community. Right?
Because I think it's going to
be really a team effort of like we want people to be,
you know,
when there is a shelter, a tiny house, a village or a,
you know, a building
that's going to be opening in a neighborhood,
we want the neighbors to come
and welcome their new neighbors in
and really establish those relationships.
And yeah, so it's a massive undertaking.
And I'm I'm really excited by the progress
that we're making so far and we're going to keep at it.
-Executive Zahilay, how
I'm a lot of things price people out of their homes
and rental
units.
King County property tax bills are eye poppingly
high this year.
I know you have heard from so many different people.
A couple of reasons for it.
The collapse of commercial real estate values
and the experts say voter approved levees.
How do already high property tax bills affect
your thinking?
You're talking about a county housing levy next year.
-Yeah, it's a a great question.
We are entering an era of, from what I've seen,
an unprecedented level of tax sensitivity in our community.
I can't open my social media without people
talking about property taxes and sales taxes
and how those contribute
to the overall affordability crisis.
And that makes me have a lot of anxiety
and a lot of,
I guess, paralysis around decision
making because at King County,
we don't have progressive taxing options, right?
We only have property taxes and sales taxes.
So we're
constantly stuck between this rock and a hard place of
do you raise the revenue
you need to solve pressing problems
or do you avoid raising regressive taxes?
And that's not an easy decision.
And that's why when I talked about
the potential housing levy, I didn't just come out
and say, we're doing a housing levy,
I said, we're going to look into this.
And a big part of the analysis has to be
what is the tradeoff
of raising people's property taxes
versus raising the revenue
you need to build affordable housing?
That's tough.
A tough conversation to have.
And I'm putting the pressure on our analysts, our budget
and the coalitions who are asking for this
to show me the work show me how
this is going to impact overall affordability
and who it's going to help if we do this.
So that's how it factors in.
It's a really tough trade off and you got to make sure that
people are going to be able to afford to live here.
-Mayor Wilson, Downtown Seattle is not growing jobs
these days.
It's just not it's losing them to places like Bellevue.
The city has lost 25,000 jobs over four years.
And the thinking is the data.
Folks say
that if you extend that out five years,
it could be as high as 37,000 jobs.
What is your plan to turn that around?
-Yeah, great question.
And I think I mean, I want Seattle
to be a great place to do business and,
you know,
part of this,
I think, is really understanding
the multiple issues that influence businesses
when they're determining where they want to locate.
And so when I talk to folks in the business community,
the affordability crisis, like I mentioned before,
is something that's very much on their minds, too. Right.
And the fact that
you really need to be able to recruit a workforce
that is able to work
downtown, wants to work downtown,
that means they need to be able
to afford to live in the city.
Homelessness and public safety are also really
prominent issues for the business community.
And that's something where,
you know, I'm hopeful that if we can make some really
tangible, visible progress
in downtown and surrounding neighborhoods
on the homelessness crisis and on public safety,
that that's something that will really help
when we're thinking about trying to
have jobs
grow again right in our in our downtown core.
And then the tax environment, I think is one kind of factor
among many and definitely something
where, you know, I've said before,
it's not good for Seattle to be like
wildly out of step with Bellevue
in terms of the cost of doing business and also,
you know, at the city, we have a very challenging
budget ahead of us, right, where we have
a really significant budget deficit.
And, you know, looking back to 2020
when the Jumpstart payroll expense tax was passed,
that tax has floated the city budget for the last
five or six years.
And it's a really good thing
that we were able to get that passed. Right.
So I think there is. But it angers business,
right?
And so what I'm saying that, you know,
we need to keep that in proportion.
Right.
Again, taxes are one among many factors that are
kind of on businesses minds.
And so
in my mind,
if we can make a lot of progress
on homelessness and public safety,
we can be mindful of the cost of doing business,
including taxes.
But there's obviously a lot of factors there as well.
I think
the other thing is just to you know, you look at the
what's been happening with jobs, right?
There's also a lot of reasons for that.
We've seen
layoffs in the tech sector, which are maybe related to AI.
Right. To other things as well.
And and so part of this is a bigger conversation
around kind of the future of our regional economy, like
how can we encourage diversification, right?
Because it's also not healthy to have an economy
that is so dependent and focused on one sector.
So what can we do to, for example,
really foster development
in like the clean energy economy, Right?
Like,
are there ways that we can attract
other kinds of businesses to Seattle?
And I think also in terms of downtown
really thinking about it not just as a 9 to 5 kind of
office neighborhood,
but what are we doing to really make it
into a more 24 seven residential neighborhood?
And there have been some good progress in that direction.
You know, housing continues to grow downtown.
Can we do more office to housing conversions?
Like what can we do
to really
live in the neighborhood in a way
that will help to fill those vacancies?
But that's
but that's
kind of a multi-prong strategy,
working with our arts and culture sector.
And so I think there's a lot of a lot of potential there.
Something else that
impacts the city of Seattle is climate preparedness.
And 17 states in our country have already seen record
heat waves this year.
I'm wondering what you're doing
now in preparation for another heat wave
this summer in Seattle or even sooner,
and what policy changes
residents might see within the city?
Yeah, I mean, that's a great question.
You know, there are some things
that predate me which the city's been working
on, which are really good in this respect.
One is turning many of our community centers
into climate resilience hubs, right?
Making them places that people can go during a heat wave
and making sure that especially for folks
experiencing homelessness, that we have locations where
where there is, you know, cooling.
And if there's wildfire smoke, right where there's also,
you know, clean air.
So there's a lot of aspects to this.
One thing I'm really interested in
exploring is how the city can work, especially
through Seattle City Light, our publicly owned utility,
to make heat pumps more available to residents.
Right.
That's something where,
you know, many, many residences in Seattle
do not have any form of air conditioning.
How can we get heat pumps know electric
electric powered heat pumps that can both do heating
and cooling
installed in more residences, in more businesses?
And how can we also make those available to renters?
So I think there's a lot of interesting
possibilities there that I'm looking forward to working on.
-Executive, climate preparedness has proven to be a really
pressing issue for King County since December,
especially with flooding.
How has flooding urgency impacted your understanding
of climate concerns
for different regions within King County?
And how are you working to improve local infrastructure?
A lawsuit filed this week alleges King County knowingly
allowed aging levees
and flood barriers to go without repairs.
-Yeah, climate change is no longer abstract or far away.
It's being experienced every single day.
And we had to enter this office
as a new administration on the heels of a
once in a century flood
that impacted so many of our communities
all around King County.
There were some towns that were turned into islands.
Critical infrastructure was destroyed.
We had to respond in very urgent ways,
and fortunately we didn't have any deaths
related to the floods.
And that's a testament to the power and the commitment
of our first responders and our government staff
and all the communities who came together.
So much gratitude to them.
But it's just a reminder
that those types of once in a century
climate disasters are going to happen much more regularly.
And so we have to be prepared.
For example,
we have a flood control district
that has been investing millions of dollars
in flood infrastructure all around
the region is part of the reason why
the flood impacts weren't much worse is because
the flood control district has been investing
in that infrastructure for a long time.
We also need to make sure that we're advancing
what King County calls our Strategic Climate Action Plan.
It has three broad categories
of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building
climate resiliency,
and partnering with frontline communities
who are most impacted by these issues.
So on greenhouse gas emissions,
we know that the number one contributor
to carbon in our region is cars.
And so the more we can invest
in a frequent, interconnected,
reliable public transit system,
the more we can get people out of cars.
We've been making a lot of progress on that front.
We did the Cross Lake Connection this year,
which was huge, opening multiple transit stations,
increasing bus
service hours by hundreds
of thousands of hours around the region.
Second
biggest contributor are our buildings
and doing things like clean energy
in our buildings
and giving communities heat pumps
like the mayor was talking about are critical.
More heating centers, cooling centers,
and then just co-designing all of these solutions
with the communities who are living under airports,
living next to pollution,
who are have disproportional rates of asthma,
like the communities that I grew up in
in South Seattle and in Skyway.
Those are all really critical
to making sure that we're delivering tangible
safety results for all of our communities.
-Mayor Wilson, you recently
paused the planned addition of surveillance cameras.
Notably, you did not kill this program
that now includes
and I think
will continue to include 62 cameras,
although you may be turning one off, I think.
What are you planning long term for these cameras?
You know, we all know the cameras are everywhere.
They're in our hands.
The room on the ferryboats, you know, all over the place.
And the police find them enormously helpful,
as you as you stated earlier.
Right.
-Yes.
So there are several things going on.
So as you said, I paused the planned expansion,
which the city council had approved last year.
And the reason that I did that is primarily around
concerns about federal immigration
enforcement and wanting to do more
to really understand
and secure
the data that we're collecting through those cameras.
And so what we've done is
we're working on starting an audit
that the NYU policing is going to be conducting
into the data security storage and sharing
practices around our real time
crime center and the CCTV cameras.
So that's going to take probably a few months.
And so and that will cover, I think, also
kind of privacy more broadly.
And then at the same time,
you know, the initial 62 cameras
that were I mean, they only
they turned on last April. So they've only
been in operation for about a year now.
And so there was a planned evaluation
that is going on this year that are Office of
the Inspector general in collaboration with
UPenn is conducting, which is basically an evaluation of
basically the ways that the cameras
are being used in investigating crimes
and kind of assessing their usefulness.
And so that evaluation is ongoing and will be completed
hopefully by the end of this year.
And so basically there's
I'm going to be making
another decision once we get the results of the
NYU policing audit around whether to
commence immediately with the planned expansion
into three additional neighborhoods.
I don't know if everyone has the context, but right now
the 62 cameras are in downtown kind of business district,
the Chinatown International
District and North Aurora Corridor
and the and yes, we have turned off
as it's a little complicated, I was going to say
one of the 62 cameras, but actually
each of the 62 cameras is five cameras on a post.
And we have turned off a couple
of one of those
clusters of five because they're aimed at it's
very kind of, again,
aimed at a facility that provides
reproductive health care and gender affirming care.
And although the
images that those cameras collected were masked,
being masked,
we just wanted to make extra sure through this audit
that that was something that couldn't be undone.
So I'll be making a decision
around whether the planned expansion
into three additional neighborhoods
Garfield Central District
near Garfield Capital home that we have district and
the stadium district should move forward.
But then I think once that
evaluation is complete, I just really think
we need to have a bigger public conversation
that is informed by really an understanding
of this technology, the risks involved in terms of
both kind of civil liberties, privacy and potential abuse
and the utility of the cameras in primarily
in solving crime. Right.
So I think there's some there's some question
and kind of muddy research about whether cameras
actually deter or prevent crime in any significant way.
But I think from what
I have seen, that they are undoubtedly useful
in solving crimes, including serious crimes like homicides.
Right.
But, you know, the magnitude of that utility.
Right.
That's another thing that I'm hoping
that we can get some more information about.
So I think there needs to be a public conversation
around those kind of tradeoffs between the usefulness
of the surveillance technology and the risks
and downsides of it
and then just the place of it
in our larger public safety strategy,
because I think it's really important to recognize that,
like a lot of focus gets put on this
because it's like a switch that you can turn on or off.
But what we actually need
to do to make our communities safer
is so much bigger and multifaceted.
You know, cameras are not by themselves
a public safety strategy at all.
But I do personally at this point think that they are
probably a modest but useful part of it.
And so the question is really
when is this appropriate and and what is too far.
-Executive, the county grants program
for social services is to be kind of almost
you walked into this as an executive,
but you also served on the county council years prior.
What steps are you taking to clean up
this pretty significant and problem?
-Yeah, so I'm sure people have seen
the stories and the Seattle Times and beyond,
but the steps that we are taking are,
number one, making this a top priority.
In my first 100 days, we put forward
an executive order
that makes sure that we are
directing all of our departments,
all of our agencies to be a high performing,
accountable, transparent government.
That means making sure that we have
an internal auditor in our executive office
that is leading a subcabinet for accountability,
making sure that they are
looking at any risky programs, risky systems,
and proactively fixing them before they produce problems,
making sure that we're doing a base budget analysis
for the first time in the history of King County,
meaning most of the time when we do budgeting,
we just roll over
90, 95% of the budget from one year to the next,
and just change things on the margins.
This year, for the first time, because of our executive
order, we're directing all agencies
to start from the bottom up.
Look at all programs, look at all initiatives,
make sure that every program
or initiative that we're funding
is effective and accountable.
And that's the way that we're going to
continue a program and move away
when it's not producing the results that we want.
And really
making sure that we're implementing
all of the auditor recommendations.
I'm proud to say that our hardworking D.C.
Department, which is the subject of some of these,
is on track to meet all ten of the auditor recommendations.
So they're doing really great work
to promote accountability and transparency.
And we're going to continue to get better.
That's our motto, continue to get better.
That's one of our very top priorities.
-Executive, what are your thoughts
about Starbucks moving some jobs out of the city
of Seattle
and Microsoft and other companies
with offices on the East Side
saying that the millionaire's tax
could prompt some of them to leave the state?
In other words, can we overtax our companies
and hurt our tax base for public services?
-Everything is a tradeoff analysis, right?
There's no that's what I'm saying.
When there's no like clean,
everything has to be in the
most know one ideological perspective.
Everything is a tradeoff.
Of course, I think taxes can
make companies make decisions about staying or leaving.
And at the same time, we can't be
the most regressive state tax state in the country.
I think we're 49 out of 50 and how fair our tax code is.
And so absolutely,
I think we need to find progressive revenue options.
I think that that's the way that we relieve
some of that regressive tax burden
that I was talking about of property
taxes and sales taxes which eat away at the buying power
of our most marginalized and lowest income communities.
And so whatever we can do to relieve
that pressure and continue to raise the resources
we need to solve pressing problems
and also at the same time make sure making sure
that the money that we are collecting
is going to its highest and best use
and producing the results that we want.
That's 100% very, very important
aspect of this too,
which goes back
to the executive,
the better government executive order
that I was talking about before.
So we need all of the above and we need to not dismiss
or diminish the other side of our decisions
whenever they come up,
which is something
that I feel like happens a lot,
which is if you support a decision,
you're almost incentivized to say
that unintended consequence, that
that doesn't even matter, that doesn't even exist.
It's not real.
We can't do that.
We have to take into account all of the factors and land
in the best decision possible on balance.
-Thank you, Mayor Wilson.
We all know the taxing climate
has dramatically changed since your campaign.
As a new progressive,
do you still think progressive
taxes are an easy and promising solution?
-I've never thought that they were easy
for someone who's been fighting for progressive taxes
for a very long time.
I can tell you they're not easy.
It was very, very exciting to see the billionaire
tax pass the legislature.
Actually, one of my early like,
I guess I would say like the first big city wide
coalition, big campaign
that I helped to run was back in 2017,
right after Trump got elected for the first time.
And we ran a campaign
where we were pushing the Seattle City Council
to pass an income tax on high income households,
knowing that
that was going to be legally challenged
because we have this big history in our state of,
you know,
1930s court decisions
saying that you can't do a progressive income tax.
So and that that was a measure that passed unanimously
through the council and then got tied up in court.
So and at that time, I mean, the idea
that you would have the state legislature pass
a progressive income tax was pretty far fetched.
So it's just really, really exciting.
About ten years later to see that actually happen,
I think the claims that millionaires
are going to leave our state are super overblown.
And if you know the ones that leave like by so
or so, but that is to say so
in general, we still have a very regressive tax system
and my office is doing a lot of work to look at what
what our options are in terms of progressive taxation.
We do have more
flexibility at the city than the county
in terms of our taxing authority.
And at the same time, I believe what I said before,
which is that it's not good for Seattle's
business environment, for example, for the cost of
doing business in downtown Seattle
to be wildly out of step
with for it, for instance, neighboring Bellevue.
So, you know, if
Bellevue wants to pass a tax like Jumpstart, I will.
Yeah, let's do it.
That's one way to even the playing field.
But yeah, so,
I mean,
I think we're kind of looking for that sweet spot
or what are some progressive tax options
which don't actually make the cost of employing people
in Seattle higher at this point.
So we'll see where that goes.
And I think again, I'll just say,
you know,
we have a large structural budget deficit in the city
that we're going to have to figure out
how to deal with in this upcoming budget cycle.
And, you know, my Budget
office budget staff are hard at work
trying to figure out both how we can use our revenue
as effectively and efficiently as possible.
And I think similar
similar refrain to the executive, right?
If there are programs that aren't
fulfilling their promise that aren't working, like
we're not going to be afraid to end them. Right.
And so I think that being
a progressive doesn't necessarily mean
that we keep layering on spending
and we never stop doing things right.
So I think that's really important.
And at the same time,
we probably are going to need new revenue.
-Good governance i part of being a good progressive.
Yes, that's just part of the top line message.
Absolutely.
-And I think the other thing that I just want to say
about this whole narrative around
kind of city spending, city funding,
the amount of money that we need to spend,
whether it's at the city or the county local government.
Right.
It really depends on kind of the scale of the problems
that local government is called upon to solve.
And so I think
when you look at like
the larger forces
that are impinging upon us and you look at like
the housing crisis, for example, right.
And the way that the homelessness crisis
has grown and grown and grown or climate change. Right.
And the kinds of ways that the climate crisis
is going to call upon us to make investments
into resilience for our communities.
Right. Like those are things which
which are growing.
And that means more. You know,
I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes
there's this narrative of like,
you know, spending per person is growing over time.
And so that means that that is wasteful spending.
Sometimes it's just that
the problems that we are being called
upon to solve are getting bigger.
They are. They really are. -Executive Zahilay,
some students sitting here today are studying peace
and conflict.
With that in mind, how often do you folks meet
together to avoid conflict and how do you resolve them
when they come up and tell us one tell us a good one.
-I mean, we've only been here for like a few months.
-Yeah, but, you know, so...
-And we've met like 100 times. -So we've had a lot of time.
-Yeah, we, we meet pretty regularly and talk...
-So I mean we have,
we have like specific meetings together with,
you know, just us or with our teams,
but also we both serve on a number of entities
together, right?
So we're both new members of the Sound Transit.
One, you're not a new member,
but we're both members of the Sound Transit board.
We're both members of the King County
Regional Homelessness Authority.
So we have actually a lot of occasion to talk.
And I mean, one of the things
that's really exciting to me about coming into office
in this moment is that you also are stepping into office.
And I think that we are so aligned on like so many things
in terms of how we address our our challenges.
And I think
also both are just coming out that this with the outlook of
close coordination and partnership
between the city and county is absolutely essential.
And I think we're identifying ways
that that has not worked well in the past
and trying to figure out
how as we move forward, we can work
much more and collaborations.
So, you know, no conflict here.
Not yet. -One of us goes next year.
I know.
Famous last words, right?
One of our overarching
principles is that not that we're
always going to agree on everything,
but we have a no surprises rule amongst one another,
which is always we, we we try to overcommunicate.
Our teams are always talking to each other.
And if we are going to have a departure on something that
you're not finding out about that
in the media or on the newspaper,
But we've long given each other a heads up about stuff.
-Yeah, for three months it's been working okay.
-So executive
the King County Council, with your blessing, has banned
federal immigration enforcers from using nonpublic
county property for staging,
processing or operating immigration enforcement.
What is the practical impact of this,
and when do these proclamations start
to risk drawing on desired attention to King County?
-Yeah, it's it is such a tough time
that we're
living in the amount of fear and anxiety in our communities
over the actions
of the federal government are at an all time high.
At least from my involvement in local politics.
People feel like they could get smashed up
and kidnaped at any moment.
They're seeing all kinds of excessive use of force
and even straight up daytime murders
by mass federal agents.
It's a very, very scary time.
And so what we are trying to do
is make our communities feel heard and showing them
that even if we don't have federal jurisdiction,
that we're taking the actions that are within our power
to protect them.
And so that executive action that you're talking about
in collaboration with our council
is aimed at saying the places where we have
legal authority, we are going to try to limit
ICE's reach into them.
So nonpublic properties that we own.
You can't we won't allow ICE to do staging there
without a warrant.
They can't come and do their enforcement there.
We've asked our sheriff's office to clarify
what is their role
with respect to ICE and put out very clear direction
in the cases where there are
encounters with ice, where they're recording
that they are deescalating, that they are doing everything
within their legal power to protect our communities.
And so those are the the actions
that we're trying to take.
And absolutely, you're right, it is balanced against
the issue of attracting attention from.
This president. Right.
If I could go out there
and be one of those executives who is, you know,
taunting him and and saying all kinds of things,
my view is what is the thing
that's going to keep our community safe,
not what's going to make me look good or
or raise my national profile or anything like.
So we have to protect our communities and that's my only
lens. -So we have time
to do this one.
Keep the answers
a little short list to make the time work.
-All right, Mayor Wilson,
one hallmark policy of new progressives
and from your campaign is municipal grocery stores.
Do city grocery stores remain a practical goal of yours
within the city of Seattle?
I know the legislature passed some laws
that may help with food deserts.
-Yeah, so we we're looking into this. I think I mean, in general,
my goal is to make sure that people in every neighborhood
across the city have access to affordable,
healthful, you know, culturally relevant food.
And right now,
we do have a number of neighborhoods
in the city where that is not the case.
You know,
the closure of the Fred Meyer in Lake City
got a lot of attention last year.
And so that is one area
that I think qualifies as a food desert.
We've also seen the closure of a grocery store at 23rd
and Jackson, and it's come the Dell Ridge area.
And Seattle is also kind of a grocery desert.
So there's a
number of neighborhoods where there's not great access
to food.
And so this is something that we're looking at.
There's a number of city departments
that have food access programs that are really good.
And we're trying to figure out what can we build upon
and the idea of
doing some kind of public option
grocery store is very much on the table.
So we're just I don't want to do it
just for the sake of doing it right.
I want to do it if that's time for this year
or you're not hung up about what year?
yeah, I doubt that's probably not
something that we're going
to be actually implementing this year. Right.
But we are working on it in the background
and we'll
hopefully get to a point where we can make a decision
in partnership with the community.
Because I think something I said
last year during the campaign when I talked about
this was that for some, for a project
like that to be successful, it really has to be
in partnership with the community.
It's not something that you just like plunk down,
but it's something that
there needs to be a call for and that needs to be done in
partnership with organizations and and neighbors.
-So really quickly, I have a question
for you, Mayor, about AI data centers,
AI-related data centers, and they want to come after Seattle
City Lights,
hydropower, clean, relatively cheap.
How do you have a plan for managing these requests
that are already coming into City Light?
-So I'll say
I believe that the situation is a little bit different
than was portrayed in that Seattle Times article.
I don't think there's actually
any permits that have been requested,
so things are a little bit more of a preliminary stage.
I think that it may have been portrayed.
I will say I learned about this from that Seattle Times.
I was not aware.
I was not aware that there was I mean,
so I was aware of that.
In the larger conversation around Seattle City
Light and Power Generation, because the city doesn't
just serve the city of Seattle, right?
I was aware that obviously
data centers are kind of a big and growing issue
and kind of suck on our on our power.
But I was not aware that there was contemplated
data centers within city limits.
So this is something I'm very concerned about.
And we're going to be getting a briefing very soon.
-It feel like they're coming, whether we
whether it's for sure or not, because just that's what...
-I think the city has something to say about what happens.
-So first reaction, perhaps.
-Yeah, very concerned, very concerned about,
you know,
even data centers aside because of a number of issues,
including long standing
infrastructure needs that Seattle see light.
We're looking at significant rate increases.
So I'm very very concerned about the potential
for centers
to be competing for our power, driving up prices.
And also even I mean,
even in the instance
where they would be doing their own power generation,
that would likely be fossil fuel power.
And so in our larger kind of climate
context, just generally very concerned.
And so this is an issue
that my office is going to be really digging into
and figuring out what levers we have
at the at the policy level and permitting level to
kind of force a conversation about the future
of our region's electricity generation and use and
and the place of data centers. And I in that.
-All right.
We just have a couple of minutes remaining.
So I want to ask both of you a big question,
and we'll start with you, Zahilay.
You are both new and your jobs.
What is it like governing, which is challenging enough
while trying to anticipate challenges to our region
from the federal government?
-Neither of us has known any other reality.
I thought you were going to say
what's it like governing with young children?
Because we also have young children,
although I don't know which which is harder,
the young children or the president?
-Well,
they both kind of
behave the same way. -Similar levels of maturity.
(laughter and crowd conversing)
-Yeah, similar levels.
Yeah.
I would say that
the days of feeling like the federal government
is this far off thing that does impact your
day to day life are over.
There are
tremendous consequences to the president's decisions
on the ground at the local level
in a way that I've never seen before.
You feel it every day.
If you had asked me a couple of years ago
what the top issues I hear about from our communities
are, I would have said,
you know, homelessness
and behavioral health and public safety.
Now, the number one,
the top things that I hear about from our communities
relate to the actions of of of the president,
which is kind of a shocking thing to say as a local level
elected official.
But the impacts of ice
and federal overreach and war and,
you know, the
the defunding of so many of our priorities
from Medicaid to our homelessness
funding to our climate action funding
and how those play out on the ground,
it's just something that you have to absolutely
plan for and create solutions for literally on
a day to day basis.
-Hi. Thank you, County
Executive Zahilay and Mayor Wilson for being here today.
My name is Kenny Ouedraogo.
I'm a first year political science student.
So my question for you both, mainly Mayor Wilson, is given
the city's budget deficit and trying to close that gap
while meeting
all of the urgent needs that there are with the overreach
from the federal government funding getting cut.
But also the immediate things
to help make people's lives better,
what are the kind of innovative solutions I guess,
you guys are looking towards to solve that issue?
And that would be for both of you.
-Yeah.
Yeah.
So as I mentioned,
we are looking at new revenue options.
I really don't want to have to make, you know,
$150 million a year worth of cuts to the city budget,
especially given that there are areas of the city budget
that are constrained in terms of where the money goes to.
Looking at where those cuts would happen
is really hard to see how we could make $150
million of cuts
without, first of all, deeply
impacting our homelessness budget,
which is not something we want to do in this moment
where we're trying to actually step up
our response to the homelessness crisis
and also our public safety departments,
which are funded through the general fund.
And so definitely looking at new revenue
as part of that answer.
We've also I've I've directed
all of the departments at the city to model
what a 5% cut and a 10% cut would look like,
kind of forcing them to do some internal review
assessment prioritization of the programs
that they're funding in a way
that will allow my office and our budget office
to really assess and be like, okay, what are those things
that, you know, programs that aren't really performing
as well as they should be or things
which are less essential that we can potentially cut?
So we're kind of doing both of those things.
But I'll say that my priority is really
those programs and services that are really
supporting people
in their everyday lives, that people feel every day
that are allowing them to live,
you know, safe, dignified lives and be able
to afford the city.
And so I don't want to be cutting programs that are
that are really helping people.
And I also anticipate
doing some reprioritisation within our city budget.
And I think even just within, for example, the homelessness
realm, right,
where I think we need to spend as much as we're spending
and probably more, but also we can do better at
how we are spending that money to have the greatest impact.
-Do you want me to answer that
too, or go to the next? -Yeah. Yeah.
He asked you too.
-Yes. Very similar answers.
Trying to look for cost savings,
trying to look at new revenue like we talked about before,
and reprioritizing existing resources
toward the things that, like the mayor said, communities
feel most imminently, most urgently.
And every day I'll give you examples.
We restructured our executive office
so that we have more outreach people
so we can actually go out and connect
with our communities and we have our central King
County manager here, Crystal,
who's who's a stand up crystal showed them who you are that
so people who are actually going out,
connecting with people, finding out what
their issues are, connecting them to services,
also programs that
can capture the volunteer spirit of our communities
and really get more people engaged in civic life
so that instead of just
government workers
doing community cleanups and stuff,
we're creating a platform for volunteerism.
So then we can have hundreds of people coming out and doing
community cleanups
and outreach and things of that nature.
So yeah. -my name is Cameron Bazemore.
I'm a second year computer science student.
I was wondering if the courts basically don't
strike down the state's income tax that they passed,
would you consider a county level
or city level income tax for both of you?
-So I don't I think that at the moment
state law would still not allow the county,
I think, or the city the city,
but there might be more of a question mark
to do a local income tax.
If the city can do a local income tax.
I am very willing to explore that.
I think the county would need
specific authority from the state legislature
in order to be able to do that.
-We're prohibited by the state from doing that.
Yeah. Thank you.
-Hi there.
-Hello there. I'm Brent and
I first moved to Seattle in
1993 where I moved on
to Seattle U. campus when I was a student here
and I've been in Seattle ever since,
currently living in Capitol Hill.
I'm wondering to both of you what you plan to do
in terms of vandalism, shoplifting and graffiti.
-Big issues in Seattle.
-Conflict resolution.
-Yeah.
So, I mean, the city has a graffiti program.
And so, you know, it's graffiti is being addressed
at some level.
It's it's a thing, you know, how high priority is it
something we'll be looking at moving forward.
I used to manage an apartment building.
It was really annoying when people tagged the bricks.
I had to go out and scrub it.
So very sympathetic.
Also, there's a lot of things going
on, so it's not that's not my number one highest priority.
And yeah, I mean, I
think in general, just
want to try to make sure that we're establishing
appropriate rules for behavior in public.
And that would include, you know, not
shoplifting, things like that.
Also, I think there's a bigger question around
response to kind of misdemeanor crimes.
And, you know,
I've been enjoying
conversations with our city attorney
about what
the most
effective approach there is, because there's also this
huge case backlog right now.
And, you know, I'm really interested
in figuring out how we can do more
in terms of diversion programs and ways that we can really
try to get to some of the root causes of these things,
because it's also not really effective to throw somebody
in jail for a few days and then they're back out
and doing the same thing.
Because you haven't addressed this root causes.
So a work in progress.
-Yeah, you know, jurisdictions, a lot of that jurisdiction
is going to be in the mayor's purview,
but we have a lot of connection in other ways.
You know,
if stuff is happening on transit, for example,
maybe, you know, but King County provides
the police and security service
on all of our transit systems.
So some things happen in on a bus stop or on a bus.
We have made investments
in cleanliness and security in our transit systems.
We also fund the court system.
So our our King County courts
need to make sure that they have the resources
they need
to properly resolve issues that might be coming through.
And there's not the
pandemic era backlog of cases and things like that.
We've been aggressively working to resolve that.
We have a lot of the behavioral health
system goes through. KING County.
So to the extent
some of these issues
are caused
because people have other needs,
we are putting great resources into crisis care centers
and mobile crisis responders
and nine, eight, eight and behavioral health
resources to make sure people are getting
any underlying issues,
the care that they need to get those resolved,
and then finally, we have for culture,
which is our arts and culture program.
So if there are opportunities to activate areas
through arts and culture
and get the people who are doing graffiti
and put them on a track to doing
so in a way that is additive to public life,
those are all things that we we can and will do.
-All right,
last two.
Hi there.
-Hi. My name is Jacob.
I'm a fourth year public affairs major.
Mayor Wilson, in your renter feedback survey, you saw that
one of the biggest concerns
is the ratio utility billing system.
It's something that I'm also feeling right now
because my apartment is under
the ratio utility billing system.
And I was just kind of wondering
like what
your course of action is in the aftermath of that survey
and how you're going to help support
renters who are under the rep system.
-Yeah, totally.
And actually my apartment building
also recently switched to the the ratio utility
billing system.
And so we got the our utility bills spike.
So I'm very personally aware of this issue.
Yeah.
So we're you know, right now in the mayor's office,
we're developing legislation around rental fees.
And I know that some of the council members
are also very interested in this issue.
And I think I don't think I'm sharing anything.
I can't when I say that Councilmember
Eddie Lynn in particular,
I think is very interested in the in the runs thing.
And so I think we're working with his office
to figure out whether, you know, how we're kind of
division of labor on that legislation.
But yeah, I think we're trying
to figure out what a way is to move forward
to try to address the problems that that tenants are facing
with the lack of transparency and with, you know,
increased costs and everything that that has gone with
the kind of spread of of that utility billing system.
-Last question.
Thank you for your patience. Thank you so much.
-Thank you for being here. My name is Ava
and I study applied math and public policy.
I was a previous intern at King County
and an incoming intern at City of Seattle.
I am here. Yes.
I'm going to
I'm curious about how you're supporting
nonprofits in their works, given that, you know, just
the amount of demand increase that they're experiencing.
I'm curious about how you're engaging them
and those communities.
-Yeah, I mean, I would say nonprofits is a big,
big umbrella, right?
I mean, the city, in terms of our homelessness
and human services work obviously contracts
with a wide variety of nonprofit.
It's both directly and through the King
County Homelessness Authority, and they're all seeing
a lot of increased demand for services.
I think just to give an example,
know with with food access, right,
We're at a moment where food insecurity is really high.
And so like food banks and food
access programs are seeing an increase in demand.
So, yeah, I mean, we're in conversation
with all those nonprofits and trying to figure out
how we can support support as much as possible with
with resources and other other forms of support
and yeah, I don't know, we're a work in progress,
but it's definitely something
that we're that we're aware of.
And I would say and also our Office
of Arts and Culture right in the organizations
that the city supports through that office,
trying to figure out how we can do
more on that front as well.
-Yeah, I would add
that nonprofits are critical partners in the work
that we do.
We partner with them on all facets of our services,
and a lot of nonprofits are smaller
community organizations
that are able to reach communities
that maybe King County
as a big institution can't effectively reach
because we don't live in a place,
we don't speak the language, we don't understand
the culture, we don't have the trust.
And so those partnerships are critical.
And so that's
why it's really important
when we talk about the audit
that I was asked about earlier, that
accountability and equity are not mutually exclusive.
Right? We have two.
Absolutely have accountability and make sure that we're
having this financial controls and making sure that they're
that the results that we want are coming out and we're
being good stewards of public dollars.
And at the same time,
we can't put up
such a high barrier to entry
that those smaller organizations
that can reach those
most vulnerable communities that we want to reach are not
barred from participation.
We have to bring them in
their critical partners
and at the same time we have to give them
the structures that they need to be able
to be accountable with taxpayer dollars.
-So we are going to have to wrap it right there.
There's so much to discuss
with the mayor and the county executive.
We're out of time.
And thanks to this fantastic
live audience and thanks to the TV audience. Thank you. All
(crowd applause)
♪♪