Seattle Metropolis Council’s two incumbents and 5 new district representatives took their public oath of workplace on Tuesday, and I’m honored to have been elected council president. It’s no exaggeration to say the enjoyment within the room was palpable (and gorgeous) as members delivered their speeches one after one other. Fueling the collective emotion was the dawning recognition that, with 5 new members and a sixth (a council supermajority) on the best way, huge modifications are coming to native authorities — not simply within the council’s make-up but additionally in the best way we do enterprise.
The facility of the council presidency lies primarily within the authority to refer laws to a committee for a vote. Many of the laws that goes via the method is routine and noncontroversial. Nevertheless, the previous few years have seen a pointy uptick in policy-setting council initiatives, lots of which handed via committee assessment rapidly with scant public enter and got here to a vote with minimal debate. This laws diverted time and assets away from addressing our biggest challenges and was regularly ideologically pushed.
And we’ve seen the outcomes: companies ceasing operations or leaving city, small housing suppliers pulling their below-market-rate leases off the market, and a police division hobbled by dangerously low staffing ranges, to call just some.
Underneath my management, this council received’t externalize our policymaking authority. We’ll take into account views from individuals on all sides of a difficulty. And earlier than referring new coverage laws to committee, I’ll affirm it has gone via a sturdy stakeholder course of.
As an alternative of catering to particular pursuits, we’ll deal with mission-critical work that’s aware of our constituents who’re demanding sooner progress on homelessness and public security. That’s on high of points like graffiti and potholes, and getting our fiscal home so as.
In accordance with a latest Seattle Metropolitan Chamber ballot, 68% of voters don’t belief the town to spend their tax {dollars} responsibly and the council’s approval scores are at an all-time low. To construct again public belief and drive outcomes, we should additionally exert our oversight function extra rigorously. Partially, meaning defining the particular outcomes we count on from service suppliers and measuring the efficiency of these investments regularly. In the event that they’re not working (our response to the fentanyl disaster, for instance), we will need to have the political will to reevaluate and alter course if mandatory.
As well as, we should break our reliance on new income (taxes) to pay our payments. That’s an unsustainable repair for the flawed drawback. The actual drawback is spending. In accordance with the latest report by the Metropolis’s Income Stabilization Workgroup, Common Fund base revenues had been nearing pre-pandemic ranges in 2021 they usually’ve been rising sooner than inflation and inhabitants since 2017. But the council raised over a billion {dollars} in new taxes within the final three years to gasoline spending on new packages; as an alternative of “jump-starting” Seattle’s restoration, a whole lot of companies closed or left downtown, taking these jobs elsewhere.
We now face a $220 million-per-year (and rising!) Common Fund deficit and our urgent activity might be balancing the 2025-26 biennial finances. There is no such thing as a query that this council will face some very troublesome decisions, however we do have choices. The excellent news is that we’ve acquired an extremely achieved and professionally numerous set of latest members becoming a member of our ranks, and we’ll want their contemporary, common sense perspective as we weigh our options.
My imaginative and prescient as council president boils right down to good governance, which is the inspiration of sound public coverage. I imagine that if we alter the best way we function, beginning with coming in to work in individual, Seattleites can count on to see a serious reset in tone and path at Metropolis Corridor. Judging from the temper in chambers on Tuesday, the viewers clearly agreed.
