Mayor Bruce Harrell says Seattle's making progress under his leadership

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde, a politics reporter here with Erica Barnett of Publicola, political consultant Sandeep Kaushik. And as anticipated, everybody's been waiting for this. We're going to be talking about Bruce Harrell's

[00:00:26] State of the City address. No major new initiatives were announced, but Harrell did play up a bunch of claims of progress from his administration on some of the biggest issues. Those include homelessness, public safety, housing. He spoke about taxes, teased and upcoming announcement

[00:00:43] on the city's comprehensive plan. But first, I just kind of want to ask about this setting. I was watching on the Seattle Channel, so I wasn't there at the Museum of History and Industry, but the speech sort of evoked Seattle's technological optimistic past as a

[00:01:00] way of saying, look, we can roll up our sleeves and solve the problems in the future. So there was a note of optimism there, right? Erica, that was what you felt. Were you in the

[00:01:10] room? No, I was not. I had to watch online as well. But you could see on the Seattle Channel the room looked, and again, I wasn't there. So maybe the vibes are a little

[00:01:21] different in the room, but it looked not entirely packed with people. And the word that I used in my coverage was muted. It felt like he was much in contrast to last year, which we'll

[00:01:34] talk about, but it felt like the mayor was almost asking people for applause. I mean, he literally at some points was like, come on, you can applaud for that. Whereas in the past, I think last year during his second State of the City speech, it was very

[00:01:49] much sort of casual jovial, lots of applause lines, lots of sort of back and forth between him and the audience. And the audience did not seem to be as with him. I mean, it was

[00:01:59] full of supporters, of course, as always. But it just felt more quiet, less optimistic. And though he was definitely trying to evoke a sense of progress and look at all the things that we've accomplished in the first half of my term, it just did the vibes

[00:02:15] weren't there. It wasn't giving optimism as the millennials would say. I haven't heard that giving optimism. Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't giving optimism. I'm kind of a cusper. So you know, I can speak the lingo. You can vibe with that. I don't know this language you speak.

[00:02:32] Oh my God, you old Gen Xers. Seattle's last Gen X podcast. Sandeep Kashak, what did you think about the vibes, the setting, the scene, the mood? I don't really disagree with muted as a description. I don't think it was I

[00:02:46] thought a pretty status quo speech, right? David, as you sort of teed up at the beginning here, no big new initiatives were announced. I mean, I did think it was it was celebratory in some sense because I think the overarching theme

[00:03:00] of the speech was that, hey, things aren't perfect in Seattle and we still have work to do. But the mayor seemed to be making the point or the claim that, you know, we've already made a bunch of big, bold, you know, decisions in the last couple of

[00:03:20] years and now those decisions have created processes that are working themselves out and, you know, Seattle's why you were just saying that. Well, I was basically saying these processes have been set in motion. Seattle

[00:03:39] is now on the right track and things are getting better and therefore we don't have to do anything big and new because we've already kind of set in motion, you know, the engine of innovation and boldness and, you know,

[00:03:54] were we listening to the same speech? I mean, he was talking about, you know, how we've got to completely rethink the way that we budget. We've got to, you know, we're going to do it with no new taxes.

[00:04:04] And yes, it was very, you know, roll up his sleeves kind of rhetoric, but it just it felt like, you know, I didn't I didn't feel a real sense of like rousing progress has been made, you know, we're on the way up.

[00:04:17] I mean, it felt more like, oh my God, we're going to this huge budget deficit, but everything's going to be fine because we're going to find efficiencies and we're going to, you know, scrape the budget in some way

[00:04:26] that, you know, apparently they have never done in the two years that Bruce Harrell has been mayor or the 12 years he was on the city council and we're going to find all this loose change lying around.

[00:04:36] It just did not feel to me like, you know, pointing at any particular accomplishments. I mean, I know that he did point to, you know, purported accomplishments like progress on the comprehensive plan. But the comprehensive plan is now almost a year late.

[00:04:51] You know, a lot of the stuff he was pointing to is stuff that, you know, he was talking about last year as well, you know, like let's make downtown vibrant. Well, is it vibrant yet? Because he's still talking about making downtown vibrant.

[00:05:04] So it just it just felt like, you know, he's halfway through his term and what has he accomplished? Right. Well, look, it was a 45 minute speech, right? So it's a fairly long, you know, kind of on the long end

[00:05:17] as these state of the city speeches kind of go. And I thought most of the speech was and you can question how big and bold and, you know, successful or important these things are. But most of the speech, the way it was structured was kind of a laundry

[00:05:30] list of what the mayor saw or sees as his accomplishments. Right. And, you know, I think, Erica, you're you're right to point out some of the some of the questions about, well, is this as big? You know, is the fact that we're about to have a comp plan

[00:05:44] proposal in the next couple of weeks is, you know, all that big a deal. And maybe it's kind of kind of late to the game. I mean, the reason I say a year late, which I think is a big failure on the part of this administration.

[00:05:56] Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. I mean, but I thought the underlying undercurrent of this was was that Bruce Harold was saying, hey, we're really on the right track now. Things are going in the right direction in Seattle. You know, it's all systems go. We're moving ahead.

[00:06:12] Yes, we're going to have to make some budget cuts, but we have a plan to do that. Right. And and the only place I I saw an acknowledgement of any kind of backsliding or problem was the mayor did say that homicides are up in the city.

[00:06:27] That's a setback in terms of crime and gun violence. But even that was in the context. He put that in the context of saying, we're making progress on crime. Overall, crime is down. You know, these other various forms of crime are down, you know,

[00:06:41] seven percent, 10 percent, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, there's one problem area of gun violence and homicides. But, you know, but that was that was it in terms. Everything else was kind of like, you know, yeah, things aren't perfect. But we're on track.

[00:06:55] I'll give another specific example, and that is homelessness. You know, he brought that up in his previous state of the city speech, brought it up in this one and said, you know, there's progress being made. And it reminded me a lot.

[00:07:06] And I went back and looked back at Jenny Durkin's speeches on her state of the city speech, particularly one on homelessness. And, you know, we're using the same kind of bullshit metrics to measure whether homelessness is getting better.

[00:07:19] And so I think that, you know, you would probably argue like, look around, it's terrible, you know? Look on the street. But I mean, the fact is they're looking at shelter referrals. And if you actually look into the numbers, which of course I did,

[00:07:33] you know, shelter referrals have increased by, you know, some some percentage with shelter referrals is a completely meaningless statistic that, you know, Jenny Durkin loved to use, probably Ed Murray loved to use. I don't recall. But it's it's totally meaningless.

[00:07:48] I mean, homelessness is not in fact getting better in the city of Seattle. But they keep touting these these these stats that don't mean anything. I guess hoping that people won't, you know, check the check the record or check the numbers or just think critically.

[00:08:02] But I mean, if you kind of dig even an inch deep on any of these claims, you know, I think I mean, except for, of course, crime. But frankly, crime has been getting, you know, getting better progressively since the pandemic. So I don't know.

[00:08:16] I mean, if that's the measure of a mayor's success is that most crimes are going down. Well, OK, I mean, that's that's good. But again, I mean, I just didn't hear any real accomplishments. Eric and I were both at this briefing the week before where they

[00:08:31] were kind of teeing this stuff up about homelessness. Two questions, Erica. One, I thought on this question of referrals, they did try to give data about their sense of the number of people that were getting into shelter, but they have a hard time, essentially counting that accurately.

[00:08:53] Right? This has always been true. Yeah. And so but that wasn't the only thing. It seemed like they were touting that there are fewer tense NRVs, so less sort of visible homelessness. But also, you know, on the affordable housing front,

[00:09:08] sixteen hundred fifty one rental homes opened in twenty twenty two another fourteen hundred opened in twenty twenty three. This city expects another thousand opening in twenty twenty four. I will also say just sort of on background, I was speaking to somebody

[00:09:22] beforehand and asking their take on Harold's homelessness plan. And this person said my first thought when I saw your email was what homelessness plan, you know, but do you not acknowledge that there's been some progress when it comes to affordable housing

[00:09:38] and that he's actually got some evidence and data and his administration does to sort of back that up. Or you basically saying there's been zero progress, there's zero data, there's zero evidence for that. Of course I'm not saying that. Oh, well, it sounded like it before.

[00:09:52] I'm saying shelter. So you're changing what you're saying. No, I'm not. I said shelter referrals as a bullshit metric. And it's no, you said the only progress they point to is shelter referrals when in fact he had a lot of other kinds of data

[00:10:05] that you didn't want to talk about. But and I'm not a. I didn't say I didn't want to talk about it. I'd love to talk about it. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about that. So the fact that they're now we have to affordable housing

[00:10:16] is not the same thing as shelter and it's not the same thing as housing for people who are homeless. These are these are different things. So when you build, you know, affordable housing for people making 80 percent of the median income, that's not helping people who are homeless.

[00:10:29] So let's just like be very clear, even though they want to muddy that that these are these are different forms of housing that we're talking about. Now, yes, the housing levy, which voters consistently pass, continues to fund affordable housing.

[00:10:43] And that's great. The jumpstart payroll tax passed under the last council also continues to fund affordable housing. Now in the next budget, they're probably going to rate it so it can't fund as much affordable housing. But those two things are funding affordable housing.

[00:10:57] That's not something that Harold did. That's something the voters did and it's something that Theresa Mascata passed. But didn't Harold, Son Deep? And again, I'm not presenting myself here as a Harold apologist at all.

[00:11:09] But the same person that I spoke with, who was kind of a little bit sniffy about the idea that Harold had a homeless plan, the one thing that he credited Harold with doing was being bold in asking for a much bigger housing levy than anybody thought was possible.

[00:11:23] You know, that was one area where he thought Harold did really well. And and Erica, you're kind of again, just sort of saying, eh, whatever, that the voters passed that Harold gets no credit for it. I shouldn't let Son Deep in here.

[00:11:34] I think Erica, you should respond to that really quick. So we've talked about the housing levy before. In fact, there was a lot of advocacy to make the housing levy much larger. And the reason is that this nine hundred seventy million dollar housing levy

[00:11:47] does not build that much housing, unfortunately, because housing is incredibly expensive and it's also got to pay for operations and maintenance. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But there was a big push to make the housing levy much, much larger. Harold went with the middle option.

[00:12:02] So there is a low option, a middle option and a high option. And there was the middle option was considered the cautious option. And Harold went with that. I mean, that's I'm glad that it passed for the housing levy always passed and it passed overwhelmingly.

[00:12:17] So I think they actually could have gone higher. Well, look, so if I can get a word. Sorry, I mean, look, I, of course, on deep poor son, deep in Erica, never get a word in. Never. I still can't get a word in. But OK, yeah.

[00:12:34] Just because you said that, I'm going to interrupt you and Maki for having said it. Yeah, right. So look, I think the very look, he fucking triple the housing levy. I mean, you could say like there was an even bigger option, but he did triple the housing levy.

[00:12:48] I think he gets some some credit for that. You know, he went he went pretty big on that. Now that said. He teed up the whole speech right at the beginning of his state of the city speech, the word he used to sort of sort of describe

[00:13:03] the state of the city was persistent, right? Wasn't that and which to me was was very to kind of buttress some of what Erica is saying here and support it. That seemed pretty status quo to me, right? And so yeah, we have a bigger housing levy

[00:13:19] and I do think he deserves some credit on that. But we also had news, you know, a couple of weeks ago that the number of new affordable housing projects started by the city this year is only going to be four projects and only like fifty some million dollars.

[00:13:33] And it's a big drop from, you know, the previous few years, right? Because they're repurposing money to support kind of existing projects have already started that now are more expensive. And so I do think it's fair to question whether the games

[00:13:51] that the mayor has been touting as sort of bold and innovative and really kind of putting us on this track to success aren't actually more sort of small ball incremental, you know, around the margins. Yes, progress, but like are these really solutions

[00:14:10] commensurate with the size of the problems that we face as a city in Seattle? I think there is a criticism there, you know, and I think the animating driving force behind the fact that this speech was so sad to squo is because the mayor was putting a marker

[00:14:26] down, essentially saying all but saying no new taxes, right? No new revenue, no new big spending initiatives. You know, we're going to kind of audit the budget except for shots by the most ridiculous expenditure in last year's budget. Well, anyway, yeah, we can talk about shots.

[00:14:45] Yeah, I'm sure we will at some point. But you know, I think and I actually like I don't think that I mean, first of all, I think state of the city speeches are kind of pointless in general. It's not a knock on.

[00:14:58] But keep listening. But keep listening, everybody. Yeah, you know, but like if Harold had if Harold had well, people pay attention to it, right? And if Harold had come out and said, you know, everything is amazing

[00:15:13] and it's getting better and, you know, and the state of the city is optimistic and forward looking and it's great. Like, I mean, you know, I'd be lambasting him for bullshitting people. I mean, in this speech, the reason it's muted is because the state of the city

[00:15:26] is not, you know, entirely sound right now because of this this looming budget deficit. So I don't want to knock him for like not lying to people and saying everything is great. I just, you know, but I think that that is that is kind of the reality

[00:15:39] is it's going to be muted because things are not great right now. The city is, in fact, I mean, some things are getting better. Absolutely. But, you know, the city is, in fact, you know, has set itself up with a structural deficit by doing, you know,

[00:15:53] a ton and this is under Harold's predecessor. So blame Jenny Durkin for a lot of this, you know, by doing a lot of long term spending commitments with one time funding. And and now they've they've got a really big problem on their hands.

[00:16:05] That's not the only reason, but that's a big reason. Yeah, I mean, if the mayor thinks I do agree with you that the state of the city is not like super, you know, fantastic, great,

[00:16:17] you know, like, boy, you know, this is the, you know, we are living in the greatest time in Seattle's living memory. I don't think any of I think I don't think anybody feels that way about kind of the current state of the city.

[00:16:29] And when I heard the mayor say persistent, you know, the words I was kind of thinking of if I had to kind of sum up the state of the city in one word were sort of, yeah, mixed or maybe even paused. Like, like we're all waiting for like,

[00:16:46] what is the next big shoe that's going to drop in terms of kind of how we're going to tackle the challenges like crime and homelessness and policing and all of that stuff. We're all waiting for the next shoe to drop on that stuff,

[00:16:59] but we don't know when that's going to happen or what that shoe is. And I don't think we got anything out of the state of the city speech from the mayor that that sort of indicates what that's going to be.

[00:17:11] In fact, he says we're kind of not going to do anything new for a while. And we're kind of waiting on this new council to sort of sort of start to, you know, play its cards and show it's so we're kind of paused. You both brought up taxes.

[00:17:23] Seattle Times, you know, reporting that Harold ruled out any new taxes, which of course is inaccurate. He did not rule out new taxes, but he's suggesting that there wouldn't be new taxes. It is in fact sort of in some ways what this council ran on,

[00:17:41] what this new city council ran on was somehow we're going to magically solve all of our problems with without raising taxes. How are you going to have major initiatives if there aren't going to be

[00:17:51] new taxes or are unlikely to be new taxes as was accurately reported by KUW's David Hyde and Erica C Barnett Publicola, although I think I think that it was a little bit closer to a pledge than then. You know, I need my lips. Oh, yeah.

[00:18:07] I mean, he certainly didn't say that. He certainly didn't say that. So I just want to say to respond to both of those comments. I mean, I don't think there is a shoe waiting to drop. I don't think there's a magic solution to homelessness anymore than there ever

[00:18:18] has been that we're all just waiting to happen. And I don't think there's a magic solution to hiring police. And I don't think there's a magic solution to crime. I think crime is, you know, a thing that fluctuates over time and is currently going down.

[00:18:29] So I don't think there's going to be like, I mean, maybe there'll be some new initiative, but I don't think it's going to. I mean, there's no there's just no, you know, proposal that's going to come out that's going to solve any of those things.

[00:18:42] I'm sorry, but like we've been in this situation for a long time. And it's a national, I mean, particularly like policing. Let's just talk about that. I mean, that is a nationwide national trend that, you know, we can't

[00:18:53] just pretend that we live in a silo as much as Sarah Nelson on the city council has said, you know, she doesn't care about other cities on this issue. I mean, other cities actually do matter. So I don't think there's a shoe that's going to drop.

[00:19:06] And I think we shouldn't be waiting for that. I also think, you know, this idea that we're all going to, you know, that the city is going to figure out ways the council and mayor working together to audit the budget and to find savings and to cut,

[00:19:18] cut, cut without, you know, presumably cutting, you know, too many jobs because I feel like we're sort of in a period where that is considered anathema cutting city jobs, maybe not for long, but that's kind of where we are.

[00:19:31] You know, Harold again was on the council for 12 years has been the mayor for two years. His budget office writes the budget. So why is the mayor saying that they need to, you know, essentially audit

[00:19:43] his own budget and find cuts and find waste and find, you know, all this fat that is supposedly there when his office has been writing the budget? I mean, I just find this whole discussion like a little bit absurd because we're pretending that, you know, there's somebody outside

[00:19:59] the city that's imposing the budget on the city. But no, I mean, we have a whole budget office. And then the city council has their own budget people that look at this budget.

[00:20:07] And, you know, if Mayor Harrell is going to say, oh, my God, I found all the fat here. We're going to cut it. I mean, he's inditing himself because he's been mayor for two years, for more than two years in some sense.

[00:20:18] Eric, I kind of feel like you're letting the mayor off the hook. Right? If you're if you're really saying, well, well, you know, I'm not saying there's no fat in the budget. I'm not saying that there's not stuff that could be cut.

[00:20:28] Sure. But let's go back to the earlier part of your comment where you're saying, well, there's no magic solution to homelessness or crime or policing or which of course you're right. There's no magic solution. I'm responding to you the point that.

[00:20:41] Right. But but but it's sort of like then you're saying you're kind of it sounds like you're kind of throwing up your hands and kind of saying, well, there's no real solutions. Anything's we're just going to muddle along and kind of see what happens.

[00:20:51] And, you know, nobody has an advocate for that. Blotty, blah, blah, blah. But but they go back to the point that that sort of David sort of pointed out earlier in his unnamed expert source on homelessness.

[00:21:04] Like I do kind of wonder like, OK, yeah, there's no magic solution. But do we have a plan? Like what's the fucking plan? Like what's the plan on, you know, well, so do you think it's going to come out of the Herald administration?

[00:21:18] I don't know whether it will or not. But I think I do think there is a public desire. You know, if this last election, I think wasn't just a kind of spasm of frustration and a sort of throwing

[00:21:35] in the towel, giving up kind of vote on the part of the voters. I think it was a rejection of or, you know, a vote against the left and saying you guys had control of the council and you failed.

[00:21:47] But I do think there is an expectation that people want to see progress and some solutions and at least an indication that like municipal government has an agenda and a plan, you know, a kind of strategy and a plan on some of these key problems.

[00:22:02] And I do think there's a void there right now on some of this stuff. And I guess I would caution the mayor and his folks that if they don't see that and don't come up with that at some point in the next two years,

[00:22:15] you know, as popular as he is now and as much public support as there is for the mayor. And I think he is popular. And I think voters do think his heart is in the right place for the public thinks it's art in the right place.

[00:22:28] And they're rooting for him to succeed, aside from the left, that kind of hates him and thinks everything he does is evil. Right. But that's a kind of vocal minority. But I don't know that that you're your strong. You're strong.

[00:22:40] That kind of just getting like getting wacky or you got to admit that there is a left that just hates the mayor. But anyway, leave that aside. But I don't know that you can kind of do it just on status quo

[00:22:50] and vibes like forever and small ball and incremental progress. Back to basics, potholes. Why not? Why not? I mean, just to play devil's advocate. Maybe you can. Why does the expect why is the expectation we just passed a billion dollar housing levy?

[00:23:07] It's not going to provide that much housing, but a billion dollars is a lot of money. You know, I expect people all else being equal. People will feel that there is some incremental progress the last two years and probably some incremental progress the next two years.

[00:23:23] Erica, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I just want to respond to Sun Deep saying that, you know, that my solution is just muddle along and, you know, nothing, nothing can ever be done. That is not what I was saying.

[00:23:33] And I think this is like this is actually a problem that gets to, you know, state of the city speeches and, you know, where are the voters and thinking about the election at all times? These problems, I mean, particularly homelessness

[00:23:46] is a problem that you have to solve or address. I don't know if you can ever solve it, but address and improve over the course of many mayoral administrations. You can't solve homelessness in two years. You can't solve it in one mayor's term.

[00:24:01] And so, you know, we get like these very election driven and, you know, kind of policies and these election driven speeches. And, you know, what can I do to win? What can I, you know, how can I bullshit the voters

[00:24:12] to think that I'm going to solve it in the next two years? And then the next mayor comes along and we pivot. And, you know, when I say that we're probably going to keep muddling along. I mean, yeah, that's just kind of how it goes.

[00:24:25] Unfortunately, I don't think the mayor is going to propose like, I don't know, a giant new tax to pay for homelessness or, you know, a new solution that isn't the regional authority. I think what's going to happen is, you know, as we saw last week,

[00:24:39] the administration is going to pull more services for people who are homeless back to the city. Last week, they brought outreach back under the cities, under the Human Services Department's wing, as well as homelessness prevention. Why? Well, because they've been wanting to do that forever.

[00:24:57] And, you know, Jenny Durkin wanted to do that too. And that's going to probably continue. There's going to be continued tension with the KCRHA. We're going to spend less and less money on them. And yeah, of course, that's not going to address homelessness.

[00:25:08] I mean, how could it come on? Like let's not kid ourselves. Right. I mean, I think you're saying two things. One, you're fundamentally pessimistic that we're going to see actual bold new initiatives too or plans. And I think that's probably right. Right? I think I'm I'm

[00:25:30] I think I agree with you that there's not a lot of indications right now that that we're going to see kind of kind of big moves. And obviously the speech was in some sense for all the buzzwords about boldness and innovation and stuff like that.

[00:25:44] I thought it was the antithesis of sort of putting down markers for making big moves on some of this stuff. That said, I feel like we've I really do feel like we switch places. And you're more kind of sanguine about that than I am.

[00:25:59] And I'm feeling like I'm more I'm not saying what I think is terrible. determined to try to hold the hold our municipal government to account a little bit that we do have these big problems.

[00:26:09] Like the thing I'll bring up that we've talked about in the past is fentanyl, right, the devastation that fentanyl is creating on our streets, you know, and throughout the city, the level of overdose deaths, the sort of toll

[00:26:24] that addiction is taking the human toll, but also the toll on the you know, social fabric, the fact that it's feeding sort of street disorder crime and stuff like that. And I've kind of been a broken record on this. Where's our fucking fentanyl?

[00:26:37] Like, you know, and the mayor did sort of bring it up in his speech and sort of touted the kind of task force that he set up around fentanyl, you know, which has a drug which fizzled.

[00:26:48] I mean, yes, you and I both agree has not really produced much of substance. Yes, they're going to do an opioid overdose recovery site. And I think that is an important, you know, step and a good thing. And I'm glad they're doing that.

[00:27:04] But that's not a fentanyl plant. I mean, that is not a real strategy to address what is an incredibly serious destructive problem that's getting worse in our city right now. And the frustration you're hearing from me is that, you know,

[00:27:18] I do think we need to kind of take some of these problems, you know, look at them head on in a comprehensive way. And, you know, what is the plan? What's the strategy? What are we going to do about the fact that like thousands

[00:27:31] of fucking people are dying on our streets right now? Like, where's the urgency around that? Yeah. I mean, and as a reporter, I might even be like more cynical than you, Sundeep, about like about our ability.

[00:27:43] I mean, as a reporter also just covering stuff over, you know, so many years now, I have not yet seen a mayoral administration or a city council that is willing to say this is going to be incredibly hard. It's going to be incredibly expensive.

[00:27:58] We're not going to see progress right away. It may seem like things are continuing to get worse, but we're going to stick with it. You know, I've mentioned this before, but the first opiate task force from

[00:28:09] I don't even remember when now, but it's been more than 10 years, I believe, you know, recommended safe consumption sites. And that is probably not the solution for fentanyl. I'm not advocating for that, but that they recommended it. And guess what? Politics intervened and never happened. So that was 2016.

[00:28:28] It was 2016. OK, so not quite a decade. But, you know, so politics intervening and things never actually happening or very watered down versions of things happening eventually is sort of the way Seattle does things. And, you know, I've been I've been covering the city for 23 years.

[00:28:47] And I'm not optimistic that it's going to suddenly change. I mean, except in that this I mean, I agree with you, Sandeep fentanyl is a crisis that is really visible to people and on a different level than than previous drug crises.

[00:29:03] So, you know, maybe, but I'm just I don't know, I'm not optimistic. And I am not advocating that I think that's a good thing. It's just realistically like I don't see this city council, for example, you know, putting their heads together and coming up with the plan.

[00:29:16] I mean, you know, talk to talk to me in a year or maybe. But right now they are still getting briefings on like you know, what the Office of Police Accountability is and, you know, can they, you know, run the Transportation Department themselves? The answer is no.

[00:29:33] So, you know, we're in February and I just I'm not seeing anything out of them and the mayor didn't announce anything. So I'm going to contend my pessimism continues until proven otherwise. Yeah. I mean, I think your pessimism is, you know, not misplaced or certainly

[00:29:50] there's plenty of good reasons to think, boy, you know, we really are going to make some kind of, you know, big progress on some of this stuff. But I do think I guess to boil down what I'm trying to say is

[00:30:03] I think what we saw in the last election, the kind of wholesale change in the city council is in some sense rooted in significant public frustration, right? The public doesn't think everything's hunky dory in Seattle either, right?

[00:30:18] They think things are kind of off track and we may not be dying, but we're, you know, we're a little sick or a little unhealthy and, and, you know, and they're looking for municipal leadership to demonstrate sort of confidence and competence around,

[00:30:38] you know, the issues that are are sort of pulling down the vibes, right? The public, the public sense that we are, you know, that we are on the right track. Like I said, I think they like the mayor and they have a lot of confidence in him.

[00:30:53] But I do think right now there seems to be a kind of vacuum about, you know, where are we headed? What is the what is the play here? And a bunch of like, you know, when you talk about like the mayor talked

[00:31:05] about the downtown revitalization plan and he mentioned that it's got like 46 different points to it. You know, it's a whole bunch of like incremental stuff. But what does that all add up to? I think that's still a big question.

[00:31:20] Yeah, it seems like in the election, you know, it was like the critique was that the city had too much of a hands off approach to to fentanyl. And we're going to have more of a hands on approach when it comes to law

[00:31:32] enforcement and when it comes to drug treatment. But it's it's not clear what we're going to get. And and my larger question, I'm far less of an expert on this than other people, including the two of you.

[00:31:47] But, you know, if we had all of the money in the world to throw at drug treatment right now, just fentanyl, Betty Ford clinic level drug treatment, even that's not a magic bullet in terms of helping people. Right? These are really difficult problems to solve.

[00:32:06] And so in some ways, isn't the public inevitably going to be a little bit disappointed as they have been about these issues, given that it's a global or certainly a national fentanyl crisis. It's certainly not just happening in Seattle.

[00:32:21] So it's almost like they may not be doing enough. They might not do enough. There might not be a plan. But I wonder, like how much progress is Seattle alone able to accomplish on an issue like this?

[00:32:33] It's like when you talk about policing, Eric, or you're right, right? It's it's a nationwide issue. You can't just hire cops when there's a tight job market everywhere and almost every city is facing that. It's the same with something like the affordability crisis or fentanyl.

[00:32:48] I mean, these things are hard to solve. That's what the last council found. That's what this council is going to find. And maybe in two years, the public is going to turn around and punish this council for not having solved these problems, which are hard problems to solve.

[00:33:02] Yeah, I mean, I think that we're seeing with the mayor now on fentanyl specifically sort of pivoting to a blame King County kind of posture because King County is supposed to fund public health. Of course, last week, Bob Kettle, a new city council member,

[00:33:20] was blaming the state for public health and for not funding it. So, you know, I don't see in the absence of the city deciding to invest in public health and things like suboxone, things like, you know, just treatment on demand.

[00:33:36] And I don't think that we should be sending people to Betty Ford clinic type clinics or type of rehabs for fentanyl addiction necessarily. That is super expensive and not very effective. And people tend to. I definitely wasn't suggesting we would do it.

[00:33:51] I'm just saying even if we could, it's like it doesn't work for everybody. But I think the actual solution is probably cheaper than that. And I think it, you know, it starts with broadening access to the treatment

[00:34:02] drugs that we have available and actually making it so that people, you know, are able to stay on them. But then, you know, you do get to like upstream stuff that is expensive. How do people stay on suboxone and keep showing up to their doctor?

[00:34:16] Well, they have to have housing, you know, they have to have some stability in their lives. And that is the kind of stuff that I'm talking about when I say these are like long term problems that require long term solutions.

[00:34:27] That doesn't mean the solutions don't exist for a lot of people. It's that we are not willing to fund them. And instead, you know, we're we have a mayor who's making sort of quasi no new taxes pledges in a city council that has made no new taxes pledges.

[00:34:41] And, you know, and we just we cannot fund this stuff without money. I mean, I just think that is magical thinking to think that we're going to, you know, solve the fentanyl crisis with a sudden upset,

[00:34:52] like, you know, a place where people can go a seven million dollar, you know, opioid response site, which, you know, is funded from leftover money from a couple of years ago. That's not going to cut it. So you're you're you're saying we can solve the fentanyl crisis.

[00:35:06] We just need to I think we can address it. I don't think we can solve a plan. We use the word solve just there. Sorry. OK. Well, sorry about my semantic error. I don't think you can solve homelessness and I don't think you can solve drugs.

[00:35:19] So just to be clear, I didn't mean and I'll drug drug use and end all homelessness. I meant address, but yeah, I think we can address them. So just to weigh in here, David, to your point about, you know, that

[00:35:32] that there's a certain amount of public disappointment that's just inherently baked into the cake of because these problems are super complicated and long term. I agree with Erica about all of it. We're not going to solve these problems ever, right? There's no destination on addiction or home.

[00:35:47] You know, it's a it's the process that matters, right? And can we create productive process that improves things? And on that front, I was in a meeting with Brad Finegood, who's, you know, addressed with sort of tackling the fentanyl problem at Seattle King County Public Health.

[00:36:04] And he was saying in this meeting I was attending that no city, right, to Erica's point, no city has really come up with the, you know, the full scale sort of strategy or plan yet on fentanyl.

[00:36:18] It's still a kind of huge looming problem out there in city after city, big city around the country, right? And so yes, it's not going to be easy to come up with something like that. Yes, it's going to have a price tag.

[00:36:33] Anything real is going to have a price tag. Erica is absolutely right about that. But if we want to live up to the loftier rhetoric in the mayor's speech about Seattle being a city of boldness and innovation

[00:36:43] and, you know, kind of on the leading edge of, you know, substantive change and good governance, then I think we can do better than we're fucking doing right now. I guess it's kind of my basic point. How can we do that, son, Deep, when this new council

[00:37:01] and its friends at the Chamber of Commerce are, they would be excited if the mayor had actually said, read my lips, no new taxes on Amazon and other big corporations. How are we going to see any boldness?

[00:37:13] Don't we need to spend jumpstart on the things that it's being spent on and then some double, triple, quadruple jumpstart to start to address some of these problems like drug addiction alone? You know, isn't it going to be really expensive? Don't we need bold initiatives?

[00:37:29] And in that sense, are we getting from this mayor and this council essentially empty promises because they have no intention of doing that? No, I think first of all, the idea that like you could never touch jumpstart or repurpose any jumpstart money and like the sort of

[00:37:42] spending plan that I didn't say never. You are kind of saying that you're suggesting that. Well, it's it's it's written into the legislation to be clear that you can use it for the general fund. And so I don't think anybody is claiming that.

[00:37:57] Like there is a there is a cap over which they are supposed to spend it according to the spending plan, just like they spend the soda tax according to the spending plan, just like the housing levy is spent on housing, just like any

[00:38:09] other tax that has a dedicated purpose is spent or supposed to be spent on that purpose. My question is, can you get any boldness without new money? Look, it will take more money, but I don't think money is the only impediment to being bold here. Right?

[00:38:22] I think one of the biggest problems we have in Seattle and Seattle municipal government is that it has become so ideologically silent. Like look, take a question like homelessness where the left has this sort of view about how homelessness works and the center has a very different view.

[00:38:36] And there are these people over here saying, oh, it's drugs and addiction and these other people here. Oh, it's just entirely housing. All we have to do is spend more money. People are in control. My point is your side doesn't control. They have all the power.

[00:38:49] But what I'm trying to say is to get to a comprehensive strategy or plan, it requires both sides of our political divide to give up some of their most treasured, like sort of ideological commitments and kind of meet in some kind of pragmatic grand bargain. Right?

[00:39:05] I think dealing with fentanyl is going to take some more stuff on the law enforcement side as well as on the treatment side, right, of the equation. And those are very, very difficult. You're paying it as if it is. They're very difficult.

[00:39:18] What they're doing agreements to make because both sides are so dug in about like the people who are like, oh, it's we just need to crack down on crime. And the other side is not talking about equal sides. Your time. I mean, your side, the the the centrists,

[00:39:30] they have the mayor's office because you're just the country doesn't matter. Well, so if you're changing subjects, it doesn't matter. You're my side has to compromise. Control now. Right. Right. And I'm saying and I'm saying it would behoove

[00:39:44] my side to try to find a common ground, you know, that the only way we're actually going to do anything real on this shit is neither side has the ability to like really dictate the day, right? And that's why we're kind of in a state of semi paralysis

[00:40:01] and a lot of the stuff. Yeah, money is part of the problem, but that's not the only problem we have. We have we have a kind of ideological divide problem that that keeps us from contemplating more comprehensive solutions that involve compromise.

[00:40:18] I think that's part of what I think that's a big part of the problem. I think this is very different than what you were saying before your side won the election. And that was that, you know, finally the voices of

[00:40:28] sanity are going to come back into City Hall and implement some real solutions because the left, according to you, had all this control. Now they don't have that control. So why are you reneging on responsibility? Go back and read the piece I wrote right after the

[00:40:41] twenty one election where I called out Seattle's left for being a bunch of like, you know, kind of purist ideologues, right? I don't have to read. I listen to you say it every week. Well, and the last and the last point in that

[00:40:53] the close of that piece was my thing. Man, the moderates are starting to win here. But if they double down on their own ideological stuff, they're going to meet the same fate that the left is meeting, right? You know, I was saying that two years ago.

[00:41:09] I'm saying it now. Like there's got to be efforts to try to sort of bridge that political divide if we're actually going to make progress on shit because I don't think either side as a monopoly, either on the truth or on the power

[00:41:25] to enact a full scale agenda. OK, that's it for another edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde here with Erica C Barnett and Sandeep Koushik. Our editor is Quinn Waller. Our supporters are you, the listeners who head over to patreon.com slash Seattle Nice and have been

[00:41:44] generously donating, as I said last week, we're just about meeting our expenses. So if you can help out, we would really appreciate it. Go ahead and chip in at Patreon and for everyone. Thank you so much for listening.