Rockin' New Year's Eve special predicting Seattle's future

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the latest edition of Seattle Nice. I'm David Hyde here in a special, extra special New Year's Eve, almost New Year's Eve, I should say episode where we are going to be making predictions about the future, something that this podcast never does. Erica

[00:00:29] Barnett of Publicola, why did you agree to do that? It goes against every core of your podcast being to make predictions. Well, mostly because we planned in advance for once and it wasn't

[00:00:40] you swinging some bullshit on me about giving... Oh, don't wait. Just wait. All right. And Sandeep Kaushik also here. All right. And so today with great enthusiasm, we head into 2024 with confident predictions and some from folks who listened to this podcast. And Sandeep, tell us

[00:01:00] about it. Let's start with you because you've got somebody writing in or speaking to you about a prediction. Yeah, I got a prediction from a listener who basically said that his prediction, as if I understand it correctly, is that in November of 2024, the Teresa Mosqueda citywide open seat

[00:01:22] for the city council is going to be won by a left lane candidate, which I thought was an interesting prediction. Given the last election we just had. That's incredibly juicy. Yeah. Did he

[00:01:35] tell you any more about why he thought that given the outcome of the most recent election? Yeah, he provided two reasons for his prediction. One being the vastly increased turnout of the 2024 November election. Right. We're in a presidential year and we're going to have

[00:01:50] almost 80% turnout. So that's going to interesting. And the other one being the effort to repeal the Climate Commitment Act as well as a number of other conservative ballot measures that look right now like they're going to qualify for the ballot this year is going to drive progressive turnout.

[00:02:09] All right, I like that prediction. Yeah, I think there may be something too. I don't know if I agree with it, but I like it. I don't know whether I agree with it

[00:02:16] either. I will say this, I was talking with someone today and this is not pleased to our listeners don't take this as like set in stone or gospel because I was not able to confirm it but

[00:02:26] a potential candidate for that election this coming November for the open council seat told me that she was hearing that Seattle elections is saying they're not going to have a primary. So it will just be an election in November. So that could have interesting implications if you

[00:02:45] have multiple people running. Let's say you have five candidates running, I guess they'll all be on the same ballot in November and they are going to do democracy vouchers for this election. But apparently the word was that they would not do $100 a person in democracy vouchers but

[00:03:01] $50 a person. So I think that will also raise some questions with candidates about whether they want to go the voucher route at all because you're still going to have to get I believe for a city wide race $410 contributions to even get over the threshold to qualify to kind

[00:03:18] of get the voucher money which is a lot. And if you can only get $50 a pop, is it worth it? Is it not worth it? I think those are interesting questions about the structure of this election that could have some significant impacts on how it turns out.

[00:03:33] Is it Wayne Barnett that makes that decision? Who makes that decision? I guess so. I guess it's in the purview of Seattle Ethics and Elections which would be Wayne Barnett.

[00:03:43] I haven't really dug into it but I think it's kind of odd that they're for if they forego a primary, I think that's kind of odd right? The other thing I don't know is are they going to use

[00:03:53] the ranked choice voting system that voters passed recently in Seattle? Is that going to be implemented for this single general election cattle call ballot? Because that could have implications too. Is this the dream of even your elections finally coming to Seattle politics? I think that's

[00:04:16] you know our predictor, I think that is probably his dream. Yeah we will see. As you both know, I have made the counter-intuitive or at least the counter-establishment narrative argument that I don't think higher turnout in Seattle necessarily favors the left anymore.

[00:04:36] All right so we've heard from Sandeep, that's a pretty juicy one. Erica, I understand that you are going to be making predictions of your own. I can't wait so let's hear it. What is going to happen? 2024, Erica C Barnett.

[00:04:51] Yeah so I've got a few predictions. You know and none of them are really about elections but one is about the consequences of elections, actually a couple are. My first is that this city council

[00:05:02] with a new more conservative majority is going to roll back some of the renter protections that were passed you know largely at the behest of her supported by or pushed by socialist councilman Bershama Sawant. Save what you will about Sawant but there were a lot of renter protections

[00:05:18] that happened in her committee while she was there. There's a $10 maximum late fee for example, there's relocation requirements. The city has to pay relocation for low-income tenants who are forced to move by rent increases of more than 10%. There's winter and school year eviction

[00:05:37] mortarium so there's a lot of new laws that went into effect over the last term and I think that the city council that's coming in may be interested in overturning some of those laws

[00:05:47] so I mean we'll see. They're going to have you know as we've discussed a bunch of times a really steep learning curve you know will these be their priorities? I don't know but there is definitely

[00:05:56] a very vocal landlord constituency sort of advocating for the so-called mom and pop landlords that we've been covering quite a bit at Publicola recently you know that say that all these renter protections are making it you know impossible for them to operate and driving

[00:06:12] them out of out of the city so I think they're going to have you know very sympathetic ears on the council so I can easily see you know at least some of those protections particularly the first in time ordinance which requires landlords to once they start accepting applications

[00:06:29] to rent to the first qualified applicant that's gotten a lot of complaints from landlords so I can see that getting rolled back if somebody on the new council decides to take that on.

[00:06:39] And that was a if I remember correctly that was a Lisa Herbold sponsored protection back when it passed this is a kind of it was early on in the spate of as you say there's been a shit ton of

[00:06:51] of renter protection legislation that sort of come through and the council has passed and I guess I'm going to go on the record and say I wouldn't mind seeing that one get repealed. I think that while well intended I think I do think that protection in particular

[00:07:08] has had an unintended negative consequence in that I know a lot of management agencies that manage rental properties have jacked up their application criteria so that you know basically anybody who's got sort of iffy credit or you know a less than perfect record you know

[00:07:30] wouldn't be able to meet the criteria and they could bypass them right because they have to accept the first person that meets the criteria they set out so it's led to at least some

[00:07:41] restriction right on those with less than perfect records being able to rent. I mean I think that have to be proved by more than just anecdote I mean there is a there's a new report that

[00:07:52] just came out that I reported on this week from the city that you know that basically said I mean landlords will complain you know a lot about all these restrictions but the main reason it

[00:08:04] appears landlords are getting out of the market and we're talking about small landlords with 20 units or less you know largely like landlords that have one single family house is because they're selling it making money because it's it's been a good time to sell houses and

[00:08:18] small buildings in Seattle so I mean there is a lot of complaint about the first-in-time ordinance and I can see intuitively Sundeep I see why as well you know but if the response to

[00:08:31] this is like well landlords need to be able to rent to who they want to that is exactly the reason you know that that response is exactly the reason this ordinance passed because you know that leads

[00:08:42] to racial and class discrimination. I mean all they're like there are very good reasons that Lisa Harbold and other council members supported this ordinance and it's because you know you just you have if you give landlords total discretion often they misbehave

[00:08:57] interestingly in this study from the city one of the things that the city discovered was that small landlords overwhelmingly I mean by just huge margins have the most complaints from tenants about housing violations building code violations and landlord tenant law violations so

[00:09:13] I'm a little reluctant to just simply take take them at their anecdotal word I would need a lot more evidence that this is really happening to say you know they should roll this law back but

[00:09:24] I but I think they might yeah well and I agree with you it was well intentioned and it was obviously clearly intended to address some of the problems that you're raising with either you know implicit or unintentional or for that matter intentional bias right and you know who

[00:09:40] gets apartments particularly in a hot market where multiple people are applying for it so I guess that there's a problem there I'm not sure that this has been the right solution here's my prediction my bold prediction for 2024 not much changes when it comes to the

[00:09:55] city of Seattle it it's kind of still the herald administration and we're not going to swing or lurch too far to the right as some people might fear it's just going to kind of limp

[00:10:09] along there's going to be some changes that people don't like it sounds like with maybe with you know renter protections being rolled back and some other things but by and large the city of

[00:10:19] Seattle is going to move forward in a similar direction to the direction that it's followed like for for quite a while and I'll make an even bolder prediction than that no one's going to pay any attention to Seattle City politics whatsoever for the next year because the

[00:10:36] presidential race is going to eat up all of the interest so let's hope this podcast survives that's all I can say with your support I find that perennial prediction kind of kind of silly

[00:10:49] I mean people who pay attention to local politics are you know by and large not going to be distracted by the shiny object of the the presidential election to the extent that they can't pay

[00:11:00] attention to both I'd say most people don't pay attention to local politics to my chagrin but I think that people who do are going to be engaged and I don't think that like

[00:11:10] you know who the president is uh is going to occupy everybody's total wishful thinking for this podcast as I said let's hope they do it's always a case it's always a case as I said like I I lament

[00:11:22] this all the time that people pay attention to stuff they can't really influence or do anything about you know the more national the more international the more concerned people are and the more

[00:11:31] interested people are but but locals what matters and and the people who know that know that and you know they're maybe five percent of the population unfortunately thanks for listening please please donate to Seattle nice and patreon I'm gonna offer a friendly I mean I'll make two points

[00:11:48] about David's prediction one uh I do think the argument David is making there is why it would be a bad idea to I think the main reason why it'd be a bad idea to shift our municipal

[00:11:59] elections to even years I do think they will get drowned out and will not get nearly the amount of kind of media and public oxygen uh that they get now whether it's a mayor's race or council

[00:12:11] races in years when you've got congressional and legislative and um presidential races on the ballot right so uh though it seems to me like we're kind of headed in that direction of of switching everything to even years or at least there's some momentum behind that the other

[00:12:26] thing I will add is just a friendly addendum to David's prediction which is that one year from now the three of us are going to be you know boring to tears our Seattle nice audience with the same

[00:12:39] stale takes on homelessness crime and addiction we'll be talking about the same stuff at the end of the year that we're talking about for the last year you mean things won't get solved well that

[00:12:52] seems to me what you're saying and I think that's probably right it's probably the safest prediction to be made I'm gonna counter your prediction though with one that cuts against the

[00:13:01] grain of it which is this is my kind of you know fly you know what going way out on a limb sort of sort of taking a big flyer kind of prediction and I'm gonna suggest that by the end of this year

[00:13:15] we will actually see put forward in some shape or form potentially as a ballot measure or you know potentially as something that would that would be happen councilmanically but an actual real plan to address the fentanyl crisis that is happening on our streets a plan that would

[00:13:35] actually have things wow that's a big swing yeah yeah I'm going out on a limb the council that has never gotten it done and the mayor who's never got like that's why I'm holding out the

[00:13:43] possibility that there may be an opportunity to go to the ballot with something if you can't get the politicians to do something first of all I think the the problem on our streets

[00:13:53] that's being created by by fentanyl the the the toll and lives that it's taking is just enormous and and calls cries out for a more serious and sustained response and and then secondly you

[00:14:08] know the the harm that that particularly very unform of addiction is causing not just in lost lives but in you know downstream crime and disorder and all the kind of stuff we're seeing on the

[00:14:20] streets also ought to be addressed right and so there's a vacuum right now we will see I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on a limb I've heard some preliminary sort of you know nascent conversations

[00:14:32] about trying to pull together something that could be a real plan we'll see whether those go anywhere so it's not I'm gonna but that's uh that's one of my my outlier predictions

[00:14:42] yeah I mean I think that the reason I'm extremely pessimistic about about that idea is that the council that is coming on board and you know the council president and the mayor do not frankly seem to

[00:14:57] have a grasp on what a real plan as you put it would look like and probably you and I you know might not agree on what a real plan is but I mean the proposals that I've heard so far

[00:15:07] are like let's put a teensy little bit of money into evidence-based solutions and not even necessarily do them the right way you know I'm not sure that place-based opiate response sites or one site is

[00:15:22] going to be you know the panacea that people think it is we're doing that I mean it's better than a lot of the other stuff we're doing but you know it's it's too little it's obviously late

[00:15:34] and and I'm not sure it's the right place to put our investments but like the rest of it is is mostly punitive approaches it's saying you know let's put people in traditional treatment that

[00:15:42] fails all the time and you know from which people emerge and often overdose uh let's put people in jail where they can you know supposedly dry out or you know or clean up and and think

[00:15:55] about what they've done and get sobered that way there's just there's a lot of ideas out there that are not serious ideas but I'm afraid that if we go the route you're talking about and

[00:16:04] put something in the ballot it's going to be for like very expensive capital projects and in place-based solutions plus a lot of punishment and stuff that doesn't work like like standard issue treatment so I just I haven't seen any reason that for optimism that

[00:16:21] everybody who has said they support things other than evidence-based solutions are going to suddenly support evidence-based stuff but you know maybe you know more than I do the challenge of doing something I think anything real in my mind would involve both

[00:16:38] you know what we might call carrot and stick right like like um I don't think I don't think that thinking of evidence in terms of carrots and sticks you're already off on the wrong way

[00:16:47] yeah well well I don't you have to do what works right and you have to follow the science where it goes and not think of it as punishment and reward I gotta I gotta I gotta I gotta

[00:16:58] stop for one second and ask about this because it's a rhetorical it's become a sort of rhetorical what's the right word for it trope it's a this this use of the phrase that Eric is using right now evidence-based evidence-based evidence-based evidence-based and Sandeep there's no response

[00:17:16] from you to that whatsoever you're just kind of changing the subject and sort of ignoring it so what about that like yeah okay your your your proposals are not evidence-based stand up for yourself Sandeep Koushik I'm happy to address that or just agree that you're not interested

[00:17:30] in evidence-based solutions well with the term coming from Erica and folks on the left when they say evidence-based what they're saying is they're pointing to a series of studies about what is in this formulation for the addicts themselves like what you know but these studies

[00:17:49] don't take into account the social consequences or the downstream consequences of addiction or crime right they're not a kind of comprehensive look at sort of what the what the what the reality

[00:18:00] of addiction is and all of its facets and what it does right and what I'm saying is yeah there are we we've argued about this before we don't need to keep arguing here as we're doing

[00:18:09] predictions but that there are times when it may not be the absolute best thing in the world for the addict to go to jail but it might be better overall for society if the addict goes to jail for a while

[00:18:21] and right and and the sort of quote unquote evidence-based kind of attack on that doesn't ignore the kind of downstream social consequences of of addiction so you're conceding though that the evidence the evidence I'm not necessarily concede no I'm not but what I'm saying is

[00:18:38] that there's a there's definitely we can get into the the nitty gritty of like kind of what kind of treatment well you know I could explain what I mean by evidence-based nobody yes please yes

[00:18:49] I'm happy to explain oh no no no no that was the next thing that was coming okay okay sorry well for example you know one thing the evidence does show not just in America but around the world is that punitive approaches towards addiction and particularly you know opioid

[00:19:04] addiction alcohol addiction as well do not work and what does work and particularly with opiate addiction is quote unquote meeting people where they're at which is another trope I realize but

[00:19:15] you know accepting the fact that people are not going to just go cold turkey quit on their own you know or quit in jail or quit in treatment and become you know new shiny people after

[00:19:28] they come out of the treatment car wash in fact a lot of times it takes a very long time to get somebody on the road to recovery which you know we can say let's say that sobriety we want most

[00:19:38] people to get sober in the meantime it's really important to you know a keep them alive and be improve their quality of life and so that means doing things like providing clean needles like

[00:19:50] you know I would argue providing safe drugs and when I say safe what I mean is drugs that are not adulterated with substances that will cause someone to die doing opiates being

[00:20:02] addicted is not safe but safer supply is is an incredibly important part of you know harm reduction and also providing social services regardless of whether somebody becomes clean instantaneously or not you know not doing the so-called stick of like I don't know kicking people out of shelters

[00:20:20] which we do are kicking people out of housing which we do and that in turn actually does address or begins to address all of the things that Sandeep is saying that we should be

[00:20:30] throwing people in jail for because they have you know societal consequences to people who are you know in living in cities with drug users who are homeless who are causing disorder on the

[00:20:39] streets I mean this is this is not like I mean maybe it's a radical concept for the United States but there are lots of you know Lisa Dugard who we've you know talked to and talked about

[00:20:50] quite a bit before with the with purpose dignity action has been advocating for these kind of things for a very long time and she is no radical leftist so I I think saying that scientific

[00:21:03] evidence has a leftist bias is is really kind of not seeing the force for the trees because you know addressing some of these problems and not requiring people to become perfect overnight like actually would help a lot of the stuff that's on deep that you're concerned about

[00:21:18] and that you know that I'm concerned about as well I mean I don't like you know having to see people homeless and suffering and you know passed out on the street and overdosing I don't want to keep arguing about this because I feel like we're getting far

[00:21:30] off the field from predictions and we're going back to an old argument I have another prediction yes yes another prediction go all right um so so I have actually have a couple more but the

[00:21:40] the third one is that kind of a grab bag so I'll just say going back to the city council you know you were talking David about there's not going to be alerted to the right but

[00:21:48] I think there is going to be alert towards austerity in the city budget just because by virtue of the fact that we have a city council that says they don't think that the city has a budget problem they

[00:22:00] have a spending problem and the budget problem I mean as it you know it has been laid out by by staffers the city for many months is that they're facing a 200 plus million dollar deficit

[00:22:12] over the next couple years each year I disagree with that I support that prediction I've said major major yeah so let me let me finish my prediction so I think that you misclid

[00:22:24] it made a start so I just wanted to make sure okay fair fair fine okay uh so I think that it's not going to be a lurch to the right but it is going to be alert towards austerity

[00:22:34] and how that's going to play out is you know in the form of budget cuts obviously but also I think that you know there's the rate on jumpstart that happens every year that's the payroll expense tax on big employers I think is going to really accelerate this year

[00:22:51] and I think that the original purpose under statute for which jumpstart was intended will become you know potentially kind of meaningless and be abandoned this is you know a pessimistic prediction but I think I could see it happening I also think it's going

[00:23:09] to be really hard or really unlikely for this council to pass a capital gains tax that actually increases the city's revenue um city didn't do it this year because they're waiting to see

[00:23:19] what happens at the state level with the state capital gains tax but if that's upheld it's hard for me to see the city um opting to to pass a real you know net increase in capital gains the

[00:23:29] proposal that Alex Peterson made was essentially to offset the water tax which is a regressive tax that you pay for utilities um with the new capital gains tax which is great except that

[00:23:42] 200 250 million dollar hole is still looming out there so um yeah I just I'm not optimistic about progressive revenue and I'm very pessimistic about the budget so I think that adds up to austerity I personally would like to see a municipal capital gains tax if there is one

[00:23:59] used to fund something important like a fentanyl plan right that it's actually meaningful but um uh but leaving that aside you know I did see a tweet the other day from the i-135 people

[00:24:09] right these are the uh social housing folks that passed their unfunded social housing ballot measure a year ago saying that in January they're going to come forward with a plan which it looks like

[00:24:20] they intend to take to the ballot to fund their measure to create a funding stream for their measure I don't know what taxing mechanism they intend to to use in that but it looks like

[00:24:29] they intend to go to the ballot in 24 on that and so I guess I would kind of go semi-autonomism because it's been a long time since we've seen something like this happen

[00:24:38] but I think they may have some pretty rough sledding on the ballot if they put a tax measure forward and I say that because I still don't see or have seen any evidence that they have a plan

[00:24:53] that's even remotely cooked about financing housing you know and and how they're gonna do it and so it was one thing to pass this sort of feel-good measure that didn't cost anything

[00:25:03] it's quite another if you don't have a cooked plan to come forward and say now give us a huge pile of money and an ongoing endless revenue stream and I think that's a different

[00:25:10] conversation so skeptical that at least I haven't seen it yet I and I've said before I would love for them to prove me wrong if they can create a new model for doing kind of mixed-use housing

[00:25:23] that's semi or fully self-sustaining and works along this sort of sort of sort of social housing model I'm all for it I'm not at all opposed to the idea of a new kind of kind of kind of

[00:25:34] I just haven't seen any evidence yet that they can deliver on that so and I'm not sure that that they really again have a plan I think they spent way more time on that sort of minutiae of the

[00:25:46] intersectional composition of their governing board and lived experience and that kind of stuff than they have on actually figuring out how to build and pay for housing so we'll see but if I

[00:25:55] can make a prediction I think I want to make a prediction that I think Eric I'm curious what you what you think of on this uh this is sort of low hanging fruit in some ways I'm not sure

[00:26:04] it's actually going to come to pass but at least within a year but we seem headed in that direction which is that I think King County the King County Regional Homelessness Authority is

[00:26:17] dead dead dead dead by the end of the year do you really that's interesting so I stayed away from that one to some extent because I was I was thinking god do I make a bold prediction

[00:26:28] but maybe Sun Deep will make it um that's really interesting why why do you think it's it's going to be dead within a year well first of all okay so just kind of going on and it's kind

[00:26:37] of moribund you know pass through agency which is probably the more likely scenario right but but look I first of all I think we both agree that that that King County RHA has had a series

[00:26:48] of really deep-seated problems right I mean for you can talk about the the really nominal at best sort of regional buy-in to the regional homelessness authority the fact that it's almost

[00:26:59] entirely funded by by King County and the city of Seattle and again it doesn't have its own independent funding source so it's completely dependent on those two entities for its funding and therefore those entities those governments feel like they ought to have control over their own dollars

[00:27:13] the governance structure is unwieldy and idiot frankly idiotic and terrible you know um uh and they've been without a ceo since mark dones uh resigned the position how many months has

[00:27:27] it been and I think it was in august i think it was in august yeah it's been and and I hear you know and so a huge amount rides on this search that's uh supposedly underway for the new CEO

[00:27:41] and what I have heard is that this search like they're they're talking about a timeline of onboarding a new CEO like it well into the second half of 2024 before you know so that means we're going to have a kind of semi-rutterless organization beset with all these problems for

[00:28:02] a year right you know before there's a new ceo who is if someone coming in from the outside will have a six months to a year learning curve to kind of get up to you know so

[00:28:12] it doesn't look the future here does not look that promising and I'll add to that I mean there there have been and I'm going to be writing about this soon but there have been there's just been a

[00:28:25] tremendous amount of turnover that the chief of staff um in berkland I believe just left and there's you know there's just a tremendous amount of sort of churn over there that does not I mean it doesn't bode well but it also doesn't make for a well-functioning agency

[00:28:42] so you know I can I can see I think your prediction might be a little farfetched in the in the year timeframe but I mean I I think there are just fundamental problems be way beyond the

[00:28:52] governance structure just as you said the way it's set up the fact that you know the funding sources are kind of like you know king county puts it's the same money it was spending

[00:29:02] already into the bucket and the city of Seattle does the same and you know I think that I can see the city sort of using a lack of progress as an excuse for providing less funding to the agency

[00:29:14] which is just kind of a death spiral um one of my one of my who would who would take the leadership role in it dissolving like who's who's going to step into the breach sundeep or Erica and

[00:29:27] make that happen yeah well either Bruce Harrell or um uh a dahl constant in the king county executive could buy simply you know declining to fund uh you know through the county council and

[00:29:38] you know with the city council or county councils concerns concurrence to kind of fund the agency that would necessitate a whole lot of things including laying off you know the staff all

[00:29:48] or most of the staff so I mean you can you can shut down the agency if you pull their budget because they're entirely dependent on the city and county no my question was who would do that yeah

[00:29:57] I mean what you're asking me is is is even if there's a kind of really unlikely right what David where you're saying is even if there's an internal assessment that this experiment has been a kind of

[00:30:08] failure do they have the political will to kind of you know leadership yeah yeah to say so publicly and I don't know I don't know what are we going to do instead are we going

[00:30:21] to just keep going along I'm just gonna say we can go back to the model we had a few years ago which is that you know the city and county you know fund a bunch of stuff directly with their

[00:30:31] funding right as opposed to going through this you know handing their dollars over to this regional entity which then ostensibly is spending it better only you know all their big initiatives right the big high profile we're gonna clear downtown of homeless and all that stuff is gone

[00:30:47] kind of belly up the CEO the founding CEO is gone um we're months and months and months away from having a new CEO and it's not at all clear who was going to want that job given all the problems so

[00:31:02] yeah I don't know I've heard a lot of people say that you know the who are you know in the know that the king county homelessness authority is can't fail that you know we can't go back

[00:31:12] to that system because it was not a good system where the city of Seattle and king county were sort of atomized and frankly I don't think the human services department in the city really

[00:31:23] wants to deal with homelessness now that doesn't mean that it you know that it actually can't fail but there's there's a lot of you know sort of goodwill and and you know if it's no

[00:31:33] longer goodwill just kind of momentum invested in making the KCRHA work that said I can you know imagine I'm not predicting this but I can't imagine a scenario where you know where Harrell

[00:31:45] just says you know what we're done he's never been enthusiastic about you know putting more money into the KCRHA um you know or investing in some of the initiatives that Mark Dones proposed when

[00:31:55] they were there so I I can actually see that scenario I mean we do we do try things and they fail sometimes if I can change topics slightly to the uh to the topic of another CEO

[00:32:08] situation um Sound Transit just lost its CEO Julie Tim um reportedly uh asked to leave by the board and got a really bad um evaluation and so she's out of there um as of basically now

[00:32:23] and I think they're gonna have a really tough time finding a new CEO and I don't think a new CEO um is going to be a panacea I think Sound Transit is going to continue to struggle if it

[00:32:32] doesn't figure out how to turn into a massive capital building agency and an operations agency which was kind of Julie Tim's strength um at the same time and they haven't been able to they

[00:32:45] haven't demonstrated that they can do that yet I think it's going to be a really really big challenge to find a new CEO and then find you know other people because they're hiring for other

[00:32:53] positions to actually build out all this stuff that they're you know this massive massive mega project that they're building I mean they need some mega project experts and they need a really

[00:33:03] high quality CEO and you know frankly last time they looked for a CEO you know about two years ago they really they didn't get you know a lot of uh super qualified candidates and I don't see why

[00:33:13] that'd be any different now well I will say it is a when I say when I say super qualified I mean for those particular you know like skill sets I'm not saying Julie Tim wasn't qualified

[00:33:23] in some ways but um but I think that it's a really struggled on this it's a really big job that requires in fact more than one fairly esoteric skill set right because not only to your point

[00:33:39] part of the frustration about sound transit is it's taking so fucking long for them to build anything right and so we passed a sound transit ballot measure in 2016 that I was involved in in getting that pass back in 2016 and now they're saying we're not going to get to

[00:33:54] fucking baller until 2041 you know like like so um you know it's going to take us 25 years to just to just to get to baller right and so I do think that there needs to be or there's a lot of

[00:34:07] talk right now that there needs to be somebody who has sort of construction mega project transportation um experience but the other thing you need is politically is political savvy right you've got to manage a board an appointed board of I think it's 18 regional politicians um

[00:34:29] you know who all have their own agendas and their own sort of parochial concerns and you as CEO have to kind of kind of you know negotiate that minefield and balance those interests

[00:34:39] at to say so it's asking a lot to have somebody with all this sort of detailed construction management experience who's also like a stellar politician that's going to that's a

[00:34:48] I've heard a lot of chatter about that job right and I do think there's quite a bit of interest in it um I think unlike the king county rha job which I think feels to a lot of people like it

[00:35:00] may not be the most secure career move I think there are a lot of people that that see sound transit while it has some problems as a fundamentally like rooted established important agency and so

[00:35:16] I've heard a number of names which I'm not going to air out here of people that might be interested in that position and so I think there's going to be it's going to be interesting to see how

[00:35:25] that whole whole whole thing plays out yeah well they they also need to rein in some of their board members from changing things uh all the time and I'm not talking about the suburban

[00:35:35] board members that that you know kind of fundamentally aren't really into transit I'm talking about our board members here in Seattle who want to you know constantly be changing station plans in the last minute I mean that's a huge reason that everything is always so slow

[00:35:47] is that we make decisions and then we revisit them you know add an item um while the cost to add up and there's just there's got to be a point where um you know where someone says

[00:35:59] no to that that processing stuff because it just drags everything out forever yeah let's hey I have a great idea to get to Ballard why don't we do a nine-year planning process

[00:36:09] you know which is really what they built into the I mean it's ridiculous I'm totally with you on that and but it seems to be part of the DNA of how we do politics in you know western Washington

[00:36:22] and so it's going to be hard to change that but uh I think it uh it would be a breath of fresh air to see someone come in and actually you know get some shit done that's a great place to end

[00:36:32] thanks so much for listening to another edition of Seattle nice he's sandy of cashik she's Erica see Barnett I'm David Hyde and if you want to contribute and keep this important podcast

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