City Council - Regular Meeting

Hello. I'm your host, Brian Callanan. New concerns about public safety are rising around the University of Washington after the murder of a student, a 19 year old transgender woman. So what's the city of Seattle doing about it? Plus, what's the latest on the plan to increase the capacity of homeless shelters citywide? I'm talking with position eight at large council member Alexis Mercedes Rink about these issues and the questions you're sending in too. Coming up on City Inside Out Council Edition.

South End, Southeast Seattle has sacrificed enough for transit, and so now is not a moment to be cutting corners.

All that and more coming up next on City Inside Out Council Edition. And here she is, Alexis Mercedes Rink, the council member in the position eight at large role for the city council. Great to have you here.

Always a pleasure to be here, Brian.

And I know we're smiling right now, but I need to start with something that's really difficult to talk about, recent and horrifying event, the murder of a 19 year old woman, a UW student, happened to be a transgender woman stabbed to death in the laundry room of a student housing apartment. A suspect has been arrested. A suspect has been arrested, I should say. It's not clear what motivated this attack, but there's a lot of concern about this. UW Trans Collective offered some condolences, of course, and I wanted to put in a brief excerpt from their post here. Here's what they wrote. Trans women, particularly trans women of color, are among the most vulnerable populations to violent crimes. You've been an advocate for trans rights on the city council ever since you joined. Before that, too. I wanted your perspective on what's happening because a lot of people are scared about this.

Absolutely. I mean, it is absolutely devastating. And just in the past twenty four hours, we've learned the name of the woman, who, our community has lost, her name was Juniper Blessing, and may her memory be a blessing. This is absolutely tragic, and I think for many in community, while at this time we we don't know a motive, this is being felt by our LGBTQIA community, because we know that trans women experience disproportionately high rates of violence against them, and have a, a lower life expectancy, because of that. And so what has really come up in in this moment is to also the work that we've been doing on council trying to to reckon with this reality and also reality where right now across The United States, we have over 700 pieces of anti trans legislation being considered across the country with 23 anti trans pieces of legislation actually passing this year alone.

-And I've read about this in the Seattle Gay News, just to jump on this. It sounds like a lot of people are migrating to Seattle to try to escape some of that. Can you talk about that?

Absolutely. We're in a moment of a lot of internal displacement, and this year I actually sponsored a resolution for Trans Day of Visibility, which in this moment right now where many states are trying to erase trans people, felt really important to do, and we brought in folks from our LGBT QIA commission, folks, from trans led organizations such as Gender Justice League, Lavender Rights Project, Utopia Washington, to really talk about what's happening in this country to our trans community and how Seattle must be a refuge to the trans community. And what we're hearing on the ground from mutual aid organizations that we we have a lot of folks coming into our our city and because of our affordability challenges are having trouble finding a place to live. And so, trying to really approach, this work in a way where we're supporting our our new neighbors coming in who are frankly fleeing and I think are much more akin to refugees in

this moment. Is it a state of emergency type thing? I know a few people have talked about that.

Yeah. It's I think we need to be approaching this like it is an an emerging issue and a and an emergency because the Lemkin Institute Policy Institute has actually, put forward a red flag notice for The United States marking that we are in the early stages of genocide against trans people. And so us as a city, you know, I'll be working and have been working, with advocates and translate organizations to get an idea of what are we currently seeing within our communities and what are the needs right now. And my office is working with the mayor's office incorporate what we're hearing from community into concrete actions the city can take to really build on the work that we have been doing to make sure that trans folks are able to not just live here but thrive here.

I want to touch on a larger public safety issue at UW and around the area there beyond the concerns about trans people. Eva wrote this message. University of Washington is now on list of the top 10 most dangerous campuses in The US due to regularly reported assaults, stray bullets through a sorority last year, and tragically, a woman was murdered while doing her laundry this week.

This is

the case we're referring to here. What are you doing to improve the safety and security of the campus and surrounding neighborhood? Thank you very much for that email, Ava. And I've seen at least one list where UW was on the top 10 most dangerous colleges. Others show it might be the top 30. But regardless, there are some major continuing concerns around campus here, a place where you've worked, where you got your master's degree. Talk to me about this. Eva wants to know what the city is doing about public safety in and around the University of Washington.

Yeah, it's a thank you for the question Eva. I know as someone who lived in the neighborhood for some time when I was a grad student and after And also when I was an employee at the UW, there had been a number of assaults that had happened during my time working at the UW and even just living in the neighborhood experienced and saw things myself. And so we need to be clear that, beefing up our response systems are tremendously important, so having, timely responses, but we need to be working in the realm of prevention too, and so partnering with the university, I think there's a bit of a bifurcation that happens when things happen on UW campus, you know, the UW

The UW cops

take Yes.

So we

have the UW PD, and I know actually, former council member, Sally Clark now heads over public safety over there, but we we need to do our part to really bridge that connection between city and campus work, to be working on some strategies. The U District partnership has been a really great partner to to the city in identifying some of those street level challenges and working towards activating outreach resources and having a real target approach to be really reaching out to folks who may be experiencing homelessness in the area, identifying what's happening on the street level and trying to problem solve. Beefing up that work is going to be really important because while responding is part of it, we need to be preventing things from happening in the first place.

Okay, so potentially some more police in the area, potentially some of these groups that can help prevent things a little

more. Well, I'd lift up that we have some of the, when I'm talking about targeted outreach, talking about, law enforcement assisted diversion programs, so our lead program. They have a, an acronym they call SNF, which is like a neighborhood framework for engagement, for understanding is happening and diverting folks when possible, but just trying to problem solve what is the exact ecosystem, what are the kind of activities that we're seeing, and how can we bring in service providers and also redirect to the appropriate systems where needed.

Thank you very much for that. Want I to make sure I move on with you and get an update on the city's work to expand the amount of shelter space it has for people who are experiencing homelessness. The mayor promoted this legislation. She wants 1,000 new units of emergency housing by the end of the year. You pushed for two amendments to this legislation, having staff on-site twenty four hours a day in these sanctioned encampments, making sure there are case managers for people who might have more needs too. Why did you make those amendments? And bottom line it for me, what kind of impact should Seattleites expect from these new encampments?

Well, at the top, I would state that it is really refreshing to see some urgency behind scaling housing options and emergency housing options. So appreciation to mayor Wilson and her team for really pushing this forward. The legislation that was just considered by the land use committee that I had amendments on is part of a suite of three pieces of legislation, two of which that have already passed council. One of those is a budget bill to allocate the initial round of funding for this shelter expansion. The other piece is related to signing authority to, FAS, which should help in expediting, bringing online some of these sites.

And the last piece is what we're calling the census legislation, which allows for additional, basically to expand the number of allowable units on a given site.

Mhmm.

Now I think me and my colleagues in many ways want to make sure that we're not only bringing online more, housing, more emergency housing and shelter options, but we want to make sure that it is a quality that, the, livability in these communities and the shelter is going to be good for the folks living there. And so in many ways,

that means means services.

And so I know from my work, previously in human services, I mean, I've heard from folks experiencing homelessness who maybe got into a service and they were like, gosh, I thought I'd have a case manager. I never see them. I thought, you know, we'd be able to get these services, and some kind of a breakdown on that point. And in that same vein, I've talked to frontline human services providers who are like, I have a caseload of over 35 folks, and I can't spend that time with that person and helping them for their path to stabilization. The two amendments that I put forward are really rooted on the fact that one, we want to make sure that there's folks on-site managing whatever may be coming up.

Yeah. Could be a normal normal day, but making sure there's somebody there who's just managing. There's at least two staff there that are managing operations, particularly in overnight hours, and then, the second amendment I put forward is related to a case management ratio. Yeah. Specifically speaking to setting a goal for a for our high acuity, or how we might say high needs, clients, for one, case manager for every 15 folks, and this is something that's been derived from a lot of the folks who work really closely with high needs individuals.

We need to make sure that we have a case management ratio so we have a worker able to, like, really show up and tend to that person's needs as they're navigating, whatever their life circumstances may be. So really, my amendments that I put forward are rooted in just wanting to make this work, and I think having a well supported workforce is going be really key to delivering on successful villages, not just for the folks who are working in them, the folks who are living in them, but also the surrounding neighborhoods.

Right. And I want to talk about paying for this and doing it in a sustainable way because there was an interesting move by the mayor recently. She talked with me here on the Seattle channel about some of her budget priorities. Now normally these kinds of discussions happen in late summer, early fall, but with a budget deficit of about 150,000,000 for next year, she wants to discuss this right now. She's asking city departments to look at 5% excuse me, 5% to 10% reductions in spending.

We are taking the next step, is basically going back and having those departments, like, go into more depth in terms of understanding what it would look like to cut a certain amount of some program or service, like what the impacts that would be. And so that's kind of like the process that we are in right now. So yes, it is premature for us to say like we're

going to slash this or slash this, right?

And and then at the same time, we are looking at what our revenue options are.

What do you think about this process and what the mayor is considering for the budget? It feels like she's pushing this a little early, and I know the council doesn't like to get pushed around on this kind of stuff. What's what's going on?

Yeah. I I don't know if it's if I'd characterize it as a push per se, but rather, you know, this is a new mayoral administration and one that is has inherited a substantial structural budget deficit. So I'm actually relieved that she's spending time now when we're not in the throes and the heat of budget season where things are really tense, we're trying to hash out what kind of options do we even have on the table so we can have a much more robust discussion come budget. And so I appreciate the work, so we can try and sort out, you know, what are the the kind of policy considerations that we have to have if we're looking at reductions, and also what are the revenue options. And we got here as the result of many, previous mayoral administrations and councils, decisions, and, you know, I I know that, through exploring really every possible option, it's going to give us the ability to just think more creatively about how we get through this.

Okay.

If we're gonna fix this, we are gonna need everyone working together to really sort out what are our priorities and how we get here. But I know that we have a lot of big brains in the city budget office and finance office, the dedicated leadership of our executive departments and the work of my council colleagues and their teams and our central staff. We're going to figure this out.

Okay. I did want to talk about I saw a recent headline in public coal about this. The mayor of the council might be considering creating a fire district in Seattle so the fire department could get funding from a separate levy, which would help the budget gap. This is basically how the parks are set up through the Parks District here. I'm looking at this and I'm thinking the SFD is a pretty critical service. Do we need a separate levy to support this? Can you talk about this idea? I know it's still in the early stages here, but what's going on?

Yeah, it's still being cooked up a little bit. Just by way of background, the state legislature had gave municipalities like city of Seattle, authorized us to be able to establish a fire district and with some set funding sources. I think what we're trying to grapple with as a city is we're approaching the caps to what is the allowable amount we can raise with property taxes. Yeah. I think this entire situation speaks to the the reality that municipalities across Washington are facing structural budget deficits.

We're constrained on the types of revenue that we can raise, and I've been, forced in some force is an overstatement. I've been active in Olympia trying to push our state delegation to, be working with their colleagues to allow us to have additional options more, and expand authority for jurisdictions around, for jurisdictions to be able to raise new kinds of funding. But this was a a, tax that was authorized in the most recent session, and it's an option that it has in the city. And so I think in service of us really getting creative around how can we have continuity of services Yeah. I understand why this this is on the table.

I'm waiting to see, you know, what ultimately comes before us in terms of proposal, but this is one of the options that is available to us at this time. Again, all options need to be on the table as we are navigating this budget deficit.

Thank you. I know we are really early with that piece, but I appreciate the commentary. I want to talk about another economic challenge if I could, and that would be the budget of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. It's been around for six years. As you know, it's had continuing financial problems, including at least $8,000,000 of its budget that is unaccounted for according to this recent forensic audit. Seattle City Council Member, Council Member Rivera said at a recent press conference, it's actually time to shut the KCRHA down.

This latest forensic evaluation is just the last straw. The evaluation shows a pattern of mismanagement of funds that can no longer be tolerated. It is time to find a different way to make this very important work happen.

I know you've been working on this with Councilmember Foster. Is it time to end the KCRHA? Where are we with this?

Yeah, let's start just on the point that the findings of the KCRHA forensic evaluation are serious. They require immediate but thoughtful action as we work to address the very real financial challenges.

You're not saying shut it down tomorrow, it sounds like.

Well, we can't cause further harm to people experiencing homelessness, and moving with a kind of knee jerk reaction could cause a lot of ultimate harm. So that is why myself and Councilmember Foster actually have sponsored a resolution to really navigate what is a really complex moment for all of us right now. And this resolution actually just passed out of my committee this morning. I chair over our Human Services, Labor, and Economic Development Committee, but I'd also uplift that myself and Council Member Foster actually sit on the King County Regional Homelessness Authority governing board. We are both new to the governing board.

It was at our second meeting that we received the forensic evaluation. And what we have been focused on and trying to navigate this moment has been really holding center that we need to resolve the fiscal challenges, financial challenges, and keep an eye towards maintaining services for people experiencing homelessness wherever we go from here. And so we have put together this resolution and it does a couple of things. It summarizes the findings of the forensic evaluation. It summarizes the timeline and deliverables of KCRHA over the coming months, including a corrective action plan.

It requests that the mayor's office make a recommendation and an initial assessment on that corrective action plan, and then requires the mayor's office to make an official recommendation on whether we should dissolve, restructure, or continue with KCRHA.

And that's by August 1? Did I

say That that is correct.

There is a timeline here, World

War Yes, we are working under a timeline, and so what the public should really be tuned in on are some key dates. With what we've initially requested of KCRHA, they've actually delivered on their first deliverable, which was on May 8, they submitted a response to address the high risk findings. Coming next is a deliverable on the May 23, submitting their corrective action plan with, a timeline on addressing, audit findings.

Okay.

On June 15, within our resolution, we're asking actually the executive to report back on their evaluation of the May 23 deliverable.

Okay. And so we're really doing now. Okay.

Yes. We're really getting into the weeds, but I I just wanna be clear on this point. But then that brings us to really August 1 is when we're, asking for that recommendation from the executive on what are our op what are what is their recommendation on dissolving, restructuring, or continuing? And if we're going towards dissolving, we are actually asking for information on a variety of different elements in our current homelessness response system. So, the homelessness response system in our region is very complex. Yeah. KCRHA right now holds a lot of responsibilities, not just to administering Seattle's contracts and King County's contracts, but also state funding, and also federal funding.

That's right.

And administering and holding key data systems that are required by housing and urban development. I'm all

of that.

And so I offer those things just to say we're taking this resolution approach to really map out, you know, we want to be clear on our timelines. We want to be clear on when we're expecting information on how they're going to correct, and evaluating if they can correct some of these challenges, and also starting to chart our course forward, our course moving forward as it relates to the status of all of these things, especially as we consider any type of restructuring or dissolution.

And I wanted to make sure I asked a question that a viewer sent in here. Mark has a question about the entire approach to homelessness that our region's taking. He wrote this, San Francisco's new mayor has moved away from the housing first low barrier housing model. When are we going to finally wake up and do the same? With summer almost here, we are going to see a wave of drug addicted mental health street folks moving here from San Francisco. Let's finally fix the problem. It's not as complex as people think it is. Just looking at this, the city of San Francisco has this new model that says it's seeing its lowest level of unsheltered homelessness in fifteen years with a treatment first approach, not a housing first approach. Is it time to make that change in Seattle? Mark wants to know.

I think what's interesting about what Mark's raising, and thank you for the question, Mark, because I think it speaks to the general public's frustration about how we haven't made the progress that we've needed to. And not every single person experiencing homelessness also has substance use disorder. That's often what we see.

It's a very visible part

of There's visible homelessness and there's invisible homelessness. And currently we serve a lot of that invisible homelessness through so many different systems, our family shelter system, There's folks who are much lower acuity who just get into a a shelter bed and then really just need support with, like, first and last month of of rent to get back into, housing. And so and then we have a lot of folks who are sipping their vehicles, folks who just got evicted, you know, had something happen in their life, got evicted and are are still working, but living out of their car and just trying to get by. And so I lift those things up to say we need different approaches for it to really meet the needs of of different folks. And in this moment with so much influx with KCRAHA, also with the federal government too.

It is clear from the executive orders issued by the Trump administration, by some of the initial directives and information we've seen out of HUD, as they've indicated with Continuum of Care funding

They're really pushing for treatment first too.

They're moving away from treatment first, or they're moving towards treatment first instead. So we're we as a researcher aren't gonna have to grapple with with this question. Think there is still sufficient evidence that suggests that housing first and really making sure we can stabilize and have someone in one place as we start working on, recovery is is important. But as we're really in this delicate moment with our approach to homelessness, we need to have this conversation with providers. I think we should be leading with data, and evidence still suggests that Housing First is one of the best ways to support folks in their path to recovery, but we also are in a really challenging moment with the fentanyl crisis, and we do not have enough behavioral health services and supports.

Now I do want to uplift one other thing because I think it speaks to how we're trying to do things, we're trying to pilot and innovate, especially when it comes to addressing, fentanyl and overdose epidemic. Yeah. You know, we had, a bunch of our public safety agencies, so, HealthONE are, within Seattle Fire Department, in partnership with, law enforcement assisted version and other organizations actually, provide a event over the course of a couple of days to, offer, pardon me, buprenorphine.

Buprenorphine, yes.

Shot treatments. Yes, right. Which last for a number of weeks, so folks can start off.

Get off of the fentanyl.

Yes, with the last number I was that was shared with me was about 30 participants from that point as a pop up event within Little Saigon. So when we're talking about being able to start folks on a pathway to treatment, this is one that we've seen some good success from. They held it last year. They had another one a couple weeks ago. And you know, the challenge will be of course still finding those folks and reaching them so we can continue that pathway to treatment, but we are trying new things as well. But I think I'd say holistically in this moment, we're in a moment of pivot. We need to make sure that we are being thoughtful about where we go from here.

Okay. Thank you. I want to talk about the moratorium on building new detention centers you sponsored on the council. That measure recently passed here. The hope is that it'll be helpful to Seattle's immigrant communities. Why just sponsor this? What kind of impact do you think this is gonna have?

Yeah. Certainly. Thank you so much. This has been one of the actions that we can take as a city to try and address the real harm and that this federal administration is is causing to our immigrant communities. And so I'd I'd take us back to actually December 2025 where we saw the initial posting on sam.gov about, really new funding to stand up a new detention center in the Seattle area. Right. Naturally, that raised a lot of concern. And to draw a dotted line here, there was about $45,000,000,000 approved in the Big Bad Betrayal Bill or one.

Or a big beautiful bill as some people know.

Some people may see. I think it was a betrayal to the American people. But $45,000,000,000 allocated specifically to new detention center capacity. So expanding capacity or standing up new sites. So then we had that action happen. We see a sam.gov posting around initial, like, presolicitation notice, and we took action to say, well, what kind of levers can we pull on the local level? Land use and zoning is It's one

of them.

And so, by putting forward a one year moratorium, and I do want to be clear on this point because I think there's, confusion or curiosity in community about why it's not an outright ban. We put in place, well, a moratorium. We can do more returns of about one year.

Right.

As we develop permanent regulations. And because of land use code and requirements around environmental review, it

takes a while.

It does take a while, and we wanted to be able to take a legislative path that allowed us to move quickly to stop or prevent anything from coming online.

Okay, okay.

And be able to set the stage towards a permanent ban. And so that is ultimately what we did. We introduced this as emergency legislation, so actually required seven votes. It has a higher threshold. Do we do? Emergency legislation. And we put in place a moratorium for one year. Council has the ability to extend that moratorium if we need additional time, and right now our departments are working to figure out, you know, how do we work on permanent legislation to address this issue. I'm interested still in a in a permanent ban. I think detention centers do not align with, our city's values, nor do I think we should be assisting in this federal regime's agenda, and I I say that too because of the, I mean, the continuing headlines we're seeing out of the Northwest Detention Center Yeah.

Of, abuses, human rights abuses. The UW Center for Human Rights, covers a lot of what they're seeing there. Yeah. There are, we're hearing about things of people not getting, medical attention or basic health care, sexual violence, allegations as well. And so, we we do not want to expand or allow for more of that to happen in our community.

Okay. Thank you for that. I want to try to move to what might be a light topic, light rail, but I'm not sure about this one. Although folks, I want you to look at this. One of Councilmember Rink's many viral videos on social media here documenting a trip on light rail across Lake Washington at the March where you connected with your friend, Redmond City Council Member Jessica Forsyth. A beautiful moment there, of course, but something not so beautiful. Sound Transit has announced it's not going to make it to Ballard anytime soon, which voters said yes to with Sound Transit three back in 2016. I know you're a big transit supporter here. You're vice chair of the council's transportation committee, and I know you've rallied with Ballard Light Rail supporters in the past. What do you tell them now?

We just had such an amazing moment as a region when we had the Cross Lake Connection come online. I mean, we had the second highest day of service of ridership in the entire system, our history of Sound Transit on that opening day. I think it was over 200,000 people rode light rail that day. Mhmm. And we broke a world record. We we put a train on a floating bridge. So just a feat of innovation, something we could all celebrate. Yeah. And immediately after that tremendous day for transit and for connection across our region, really, the news about the future of ST3 and how we fully deliver on the voter approved measure kind of came in, now folks are grappling with, are they ever gonna get light

Yeah, I've got about thirty seconds left, keep going.

Yeah, so we, I've been active in advocating for Ballard Light Rail and fully completing the Ballard Link Extension, including getting a date on the calendar, that is one of my asks of the Sound Transit Board to get a date on the calendar for Ballard Link Extension as well as delivering on Graham Street. I think there's a real equity problem that's on that's been put to the forefront that we've continued to defer on the Graham Street Station.

K.

We've up zoned in the neighborhood. We've planned for growth, and now we need to be able to move people and really deliver and make good on that promise. You know, the South South End, Southeast Seattle has sacrificed enough for transit, and so now is not a moment to be cutting corners and really backing up with that promise. And so, going to continue being a strong advocate for completing full Bowelink extension, which again would have the highest ridership. Yeah. Projected numbers, I believe it's, a 140 up to a 147 additional people every day in that line and continuing we need to deliver on Graham Street Station.

I know there's lots still to help with that. Councilmember Rink, thank you very much. I'm Brian Callanan. We'll see you next time on City Inside Out Council Edition.