Tonight, May 14, and next Monday evening, May 21, City Councilmembers will engage residents in comunity conversations on the 2013 budget. Tonight’s meeting will run from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Seattle Central Community College, 1701 Broadway, Broadway Edison Building, in Room BE1110. My staff and I will be there.

The conversation will center on five questions:

1. How well do the City’s spending areas align with your priorities?
2. If you had to decide which City services to protect from a $1 million budget cut, what factors would you consider in making your decision?
3. Which City programs or services do you think are most appropriate for direct user fees and which are least appropriate?
4. For which City services, if any, would you be most willing to pay additional property taxes?
5. What does it mean to you to feel “heard” by your local government?

Next Monday’s meeting on May 21 will run from 6pm to 7:30 p.m. in the New Holly Gathering Hall, 7054 32nd Ave South.

These conversations offer the public a chance to learn the basics of our city’s budget and the challenging funding decisions that accompany it.

Rather than formal public hearings where community members advocate for specific programs, these budget conversations are informal. Attendees need not come prepared with detailed knowledge of the budget or City operations. The Council will hold its formal public hearings on the 2013 City budget and Capital Budget this fall, after the Mayor has delivered his budget to the Council.

I wrote about the City’s budget in this earlier post, reporting that 2011 ended with a projected $17 million balance – $12 million more than previously expected. $5 million of this is from revenue and $7 million is from under spending. Under City policies, half of the balance will go toward replenishing the Rainy Day Fund. The remaining $6 million will serve as a cushion for this year. There will be no mid-year reduction in the budget, a welcome relief from most recent years.

Question number 2, above, is relevant to many City departments and services. One that comes to mind due to the $1 million figure is the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, which falls under the Council committee I chair. That office represents less than half of one percent of the City’s operational budget. A few years ago, the Council created a funding mechanism intended to remove it from the general fund balance by directing 75% of admissions tax revenue to fund the office. This revenue is generated mostly by cultural events, such as sports games, movies and music concerts. The arts office’s budget automatically increases or decreases in response to the amount of culture-related taxes generated, allowing it to fund Seattle non-profit artists and cultural organizations accordingly. Last year, the Mayor re-directed about $1 million away from the arts office to fund Parks Department arts programs and their Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center. The Council expects that funding to be returned to the arts office next year.

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TOWING UPDATE

During the first week of December 2011, I wrote Urban Politics # 316 saying that I, like Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, was outraged that people had to pay bills of $800 to get their cars back from Seattle towing companies. State law doesn’t limit what towing companies can charge to impound cars off private property, so I decided to see if the City could set a limit.

I and other Councilmembers asked the City Attorney’s Office if they believed Seattle could place limits on what towing companies charge. They indicated that Seattle should be able to regulate tow company rates from private property (the city contracts for tows off city streets after soliciting bids, thereby setting rates).

An interdepartmental team began work on this, involving Fleets and Administrative Services, and staff from the Mayor and Council.

STATE LEGISLATIVE SESSION

The state legislature began meeting at the start of 2012, and regulation of what towing companies can charge for impounds off private property was on the agenda. The first draft of a bill was introduced on January 12, so Seattle’s efforts shifted to the state legislature.

 Bills proposed in the House and Senate originally would have preempted Seattle or other cities from setting local limits, and set limits higher than Seattle wanted. The House passed a bill introduced and amended by Representative Pollet that set a cap, but allowed cities to set a lower cap. The Senate bill would have preempted any local regulation, but didn’t come up for a floor vote.

The state legislature then met in two special sessions in April, but took no further action on the bill.

OUTREACH TO TOWING INDUSTRY

This cleared the way for Seattle to take up consideration of a bill. However, the State retains the ability to preempt any local law, so it is important to proceed with care. Seattle’s lobbying in the state legislature emphasized that for any Seattle law, there would be outreach to the towing industry to seek their input. It’s thus important to establish a clear record of seeking collaboration with the industry.

Mayor McGinn sent a letter to towing industry groups recently seeking their collaboration and meetings are scheduled to begin next week that I plan to monitor or attend. Earlier requests for information during the state session didn’t receive a response from towing companies, making it difficult to determine a reasonable fee.

Frustrated in trying to move legislation forward, I let the Mayor know that if he could not reach an agreement by the beginning of July with the towing industry, I intend to introduce legislation regulating the industry. I hope the towing industry will participate, and assist in developing a reasonable consumer protection law. Most companies don’t charge the kind of excessive rates that have received so much publicity; a towing regulatory law would reign in the bad actors.

I will look forward to finally seeing legislation introduced in July that can provide reasonable towing fees in Seattle.

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Today, the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) received direction about the Rental Housing Inspection Program from my Housing, Human Services, Health and Culture committee.

You may remember that in March, I proposed a program that would require inspection of properties that have been the subject of serious complaints first and then inspecting Seattle’s 42,000 rental properties, slowly over a period of ten years.

Today the Councilmembers in attendance (myself along with Councilmembers Bagshaw, Godden, and Clark) agreed that given that we don’t know exactly how much rental housing is in poor shape, the best way to improve the condition of unsafe housing is to knit together an approach of a. making safe the housing that we know now is not safe and b. inspecting – over the next ten years – the rest of the rental housing in order to gather better information.  After we know more about the condition of all Seattle’s rental housing, we will evaluate the program and determine a schedule for future inspections.

The legislation we will consider next will be drafted with these elements as well as a number of others important to the Councilmembers I’ve been working closely with to develop this program.  Here are just a few of those elements:

1. In the year prior to the implementation of the program, DPD must engage in a multi-language outreach and education for tenants, landlords, and property managers.
2. In the first three years of the program, require landlords to complete a self-declaration that they comply with minimum safety conditions for each unit at their property.  These self-declarations will be submitted when landlords register their properties with the city and renewal will be required every 5 years.
3. DPD will require that landlords with properties that have multiple serious complaints to get an inspection before they are allowed to register their property.
4. DPD will expand its use of civil warrant authority when a 3^rdparty complains about the interior or exterior conditions of a rental property, as long as the conditions meet the legal threshold required by civil warrant authority.
5. Starting in second year, dedicate trained private inspectors to perform random compliance inspections.  Allow inspector flexibility on percentage of units to inspect in multi-unit buildings, but maintain a minimum floor of 15% of the units in multi-unit buildings.  Properties less than 5 years old, owner occupied, or that are otherwise inspected under existing public subsidy programs would be exempt.
6. Require property-owners to maintain inspection records to enable the City to conduct audit of inspection quality.
7. Create a team that includes tenants, landlords, advocates to – on an on-going basis – act in an advisory role in implementation and evaluation.

I have great hopes for the positive impact of the public policy we are shaping today for renters living in substandard.  In LA (because the complaint-based inspection system didn’t work there either), in 1998 they adopted the Systematic Code Enforcement Program (SCEP). SCEP inspects all multi-family residential properties in the City on a 4-year cycle–approximately 185,000 units annually.  The program received the Ash Institute Award from the Kennedy School: and resulted in a $1.3 billion re-investment in the City’s rental housing stock.  On average, this program costs tenants in LA less than $13 year.

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I recently came across this interesting article published by Studio 360 describing the Obama Administration’s $14.7 million Turnaround Arts Initiative. The initiative seeks to utilize arts education to improve eight of the nation’s worst performing schools over the next three years.

Back in 2008, I wrote about an arts education bill (UP #264) I was pursuing in our state legislature. The bill would have redirected lottery proceeds dedicated to paying baseball stadium bonds to a state-wide School Arts Program once the bonds were retired. The Washington State Arts Commission would have created a School Arts Program Committee and a competitive grant process to support arts-infused curriculum, programs, and projects in public schools. Unfortunately, over the three years it came up for a vote, it failed to pass.

Some of you may be wondering why I pursued that bill and why the Obama Administration is spending $14 million to inject the arts into education. For one, the arts are designated as a core subject area in Washington State schools, yet funding for arts instruction lags far behind that of other core subjects.

Our state’s schools may have made arts a core subject in part due to research such as a 1998 finding by Shirley Brice Heath of Stanford University, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Americans for the Arts. It found among other things that young people who regularly participate in the arts are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement.

But, I don’t believe test scores alone can determine a student’s success in life. “Stringent standardized testing requirements have forced schools and teachers to obsess over test scores at the cost of teaching critical thinking and creativity. The very nature of standardized testing is that new ideas are punished,” says Diane Ravitch in the Studio 360 article. She’s the author of The Life and Death of the Great American School System and served in the Department of Education in both the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations.

She adds “If we have a generation of kids who can’t think for themselves, our whole country is in trouble. Nations that have the highest test scores have the lowest creativity scores. The more we raise our test scores, the more we sacrifice creativity.”

The solution, Ravitch believes, is not more federal dollars. Support needs to come from local and state government, which must consider music and visual arts as valuable as reading and math, that the arts are just as important in schools as are basic subjects — that art actually is a basic subject.

We are fortunate that in Seattle schools, the arts are a basic subject. However, among the applicants for Families and Education Levy (FEL) 2012-2013 funding, no arts educators qualified. The City’s Office for Education (OFE) has now pledged to reach out to those who didn’t qualify through a series of workshops intended to produce qualifying applicants for 2013-2014 funding.

OFE will  hold four workshops: a full day on Monday, June 25^th; a half day on Tuesday, June 26^th; a full day on Wednesday, August 1^st; and a half day on Thursday, August 2^nd. For the June 26^th & August 2^nd workshops, OFE staff will meet with any arts education group requesting a one-on-one consultation. The workshops will present the Seattle School District’s general educational data and describe how FEL uses that data. School District staff will also be on hand to answer questions and to provide one-on-one instruction. Details on the workshops have yet to be published, so keep an eye on OFE’s web site for information on the location and times.

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On Monday May 7, the City Council will vote to refer a resolution I am co-sponsoring in support of an amendment to the United States Constitution to regulate corporate political spending and campaign financing.

The resolution comes as part of a national campaign to overturn the Citizens United ruling by the United States Supreme Court, spearheaded locally by Washington Public Campaigns, a group I’ve been in touch with since late 2011 about this issue. Groups such as United Republic are organizing nationally, seeking to gather momentum for this necessary change. Councilmember Conlin is the lead sponsor of the resolution.

A full council vote is scheduled for Monday, May 14.

In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same rights as persons to unrestricted spending on political speech, and overturned parts of the federal 2002 Campaign Reform Act a majority of the Supreme Court interpreted the First Amendment of the Constitution to afford corporations the same free speech protections as persons.

This has allowed for unlimited corporate spending to influence campaigns, elections, lawmaking, and public policy decisions. The Court’s decision severely restricts the ability of federal, state and local governments like Seattle to enact reasonable campaign finance reforms and regulations regarding corporate political activity.

Several proposed amendments to the Constitution have recently been introduced in Congress that would allow governments to regulate the raising and spending of money by corporations to influence elections.

The Seattle resolution notes that the people of the United States have previously used the constitutional amendment process to correct decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court that are widely deemed to be egregious or wrongly decided or significantly out-of-step with the prevailing values of the populace, and resolves that:

the City of Seattle calls on the United States Congress to initiate steps to amend the United States Constitution with provisions that clearly state that:

(1)  Corporations are not human beings, and only human beings are endowed with Constitutional rights.

(2)  Contributions and expenditures for political purposes are not Constitutionally-protected speech, and that, therefore regulating political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech.

(3)  Congress and the States shall have the power to regulate contributions and expenditures for campaigns and ballot measures, and to require public disclosure of the sources of such contributions and expenditures.

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Because of reports that the Council had heard of children sleeping in outdoor encampments, last fall the Council allocated $435,000 in new funding together with a Budget Guidance Statement that the Council’s objective of the additional funding is that no family be unsheltered by the end of 2012.  In addition, the Council has made this objective a 2012 priority in its 2012 Action Plan.  This is distinct from the 10 year Plan to End Homelessness, in that it focuses on the need for interim, emergency survival services to keep people (especially children) safe , even in those unfortunate cases that they may remain homeless in a shelter.

I am happy to report that the Human Services Department (HSD) has made strong progress in supporting the Council’s effort to shelter all families this year.  To date, $250,000 of the $435,000 has been allocated to providers and contracts are expected to exceed the minimum number of families estimated to be served.

• YWCA has received $40,000 to serve more families in the Late Night Program and $30,000 to expand the program to day service referrals.  This program provides emergency vouchers with case management services to help families move off the streets.
• Solid Ground, El Centro de La Raza and Wellspring has received $150,000 for the Rapid Re-housing Program serving families.  These funds are for case management services and/or direct housing assistance including rent payments, move-in costs, security or utility deposits, payment of past due rent and/or utility payments.
• Compass Housing Alliance has received $20,000 for case management services and $10,000 for capital project needs associated with the Safe Parking Pilot Program, which will allow a small number of people to live in their vehicles in a church parking lot.

Another $185,000 will also be available soon.  HSD announced recently that it is seeking to use this portion of the Council funds to: 1. Support organizations to increase their community’s capacity to provide shelter for homeless families and 2. Support another agency with the ability to expanding shelter capacity immediately.

HSD will report to the Council by June 30 “concerning the number of families served by the funding added by the Council and whether there is further need for additional assistance for homeless families.”  In addition, I’ll be hosting a Guaranteeing Every Family Shelter Summit in July that focuses on further steps needed to assure that no families are sleeping on the streets in Seattle in 2013.

On a related note, here is a video from the art exhibit I wrote about last month, Looking Into Light – Documenting Family Homelessness in America, brought to us by the Seattle University Project on Family Homelessness.  The picture above is from that exhibit.  It’s short; I hope you can take a moment to watch it.

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Councilmember Tim Burgess
Councilmember Nick Licata
Councilmember Mike O'Brien

Queue up your questions for the Seattle City Council
Councilmembers Burgess, Licata and O'Brien to appear on
May's City Inside/Out: Council Edition

SEATTLE – Take a moment to ask your questions of City Councilmembers. What should be the top priority for Seattle Public Schools new superintendent? What's the City doing to prepare for the upcoming plastic bag ban? How can residents get involved in this year's budget process? Whatever your questions, submit them now.

The May 8 episode of Seattle Channel's City Inside/Out: Council Edition will feature Councilmembers Tim Burgess, Nick Licata and Mike O'Brien answering your questions with host Brian Callanan.

Submit your questions for the Councilmembers by noon, Friday, May 4.

• Email: contact@seattlechannel.org
• Online: http://www.seattlechannel.org/CouncilEdition/
• Twitter: @SeattleChannel
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SeattleChannel

Don't miss this opportunity to put your issues before the City's lawmakers. Send in your questions now and tune in to Seattle Channel, Cable 21, 7:30 p.m., Tuesday,
May 8 to hear the Councilmembers respond.

Follow SEATTLE CHANNEL on Facebook and Twitter!

Seattle City Council meetings are cablecast and Webcast live on Seattle Channel 21 and on the City Council's website. Copies of legislation, Council meeting calendar, and archives of news releases can be found on the City Council website. Follow the Council on Twitter and on Facebook.

TK Lofts

Join me and Mayor Mike McGinn this Thursday, May 3^rd, for a 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. lunch hour brown-bag presentation on arts and cultural space development initiatives for Seattle. It will be held in the Bertha Knight Landes Room at City Hall. The Mayor and I will provide opening remarks.

Presented by the Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs (OACA) and the Seattle Arts Commission (SAC), the presentation will include findings and recommendations from last December’s two-day event Cultural Space Seattle, which focused on shaping policies to keep and create affordable space for local artists and arts organizations. Updates will also be presented on the Artist Space Assistance Program, a pilot program coordinated by Shunpike to provide relocation and placement services for artists and arts organizations, and on Storefronts Seattle, a program for artists to create artwork for vacant storefronts.

Former artist haven 619 Western

Square Feet Seattle, a guide to acquiring cultural space, will also be presented. Square Feet Seattle is an update to a publication my office sponsored ten years ago titled Space for Artists 2002, which offered artists a wide variety of information on how to seek out space for artistic uses at that time.

In 2008, I sponsored along with Councilmember Sally Clark the work of an advisory group called the Cultural Overlay District Advisory Committee. In 2009, they delivered to the Mayor and City Council six recommendations acknowledged through Council resolution number 31155. I continue to work with my colleagues and the Mayor to implementing their recommendations.

Another of many former artists havens: The Washington Shoe Bldg

At Thursday’s brown-bag, OACA will also provide information on its new Cultural Facilities Program, which will award one-time funding for renovations and repairs of arts and cultural facilities. Applications open in mid May and are due June 20. The program was made possible through City Council funding I sponsored last year. Along with that legislation, I asked OACA to report to Council this summer on plans for making the program an annual one, rather than one-time. I think it’s time the City joins the County and the State in having a formal program that can respond to capital funding requests received each year from arts and cultural organizations.

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King County Metro Transit will discontinue the Ride Free Area in Downtown Seattle on September 29, 2012. The ride free area runs from Battery Street to Jackson Street, and from Elliott Bay to 6^thAvenue, from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.

"Magic Carpet" free ride area, 1975 (Seattle Municipal Archives)

The Ride Fee Area was established in 1973 as a partnership between Metro and the City of Seattle. It was originally called the “Magic Carpet” ride free area (see photo).

The end of the Free Ride Area creates a challenge for people with little or no income, who use the Free Ride Area to access service such as healthcare and food banks. Some of these services are located in part due to the existence of the Free Ride Area. Seattle and King County are working with human services agencies on how best to address these needs.

I wrote King County with a request that they support providing a free shuttle service in the core of Downtown Seattle with stops near important local service areas.

I noted that eliminating the Ride Free Area will affect those with few resources, and could place an additional burden on human services providers. I encouraged support for a free shuttle service in the core of Downtown Seattle with stops near important local service areas, including Harborview Medical Center, and a 20-minute operation schedule.

Additional background information on the Ride Free Area, and the Congestion Relief Fee, is listed below.

In 2011, the King County Council passed legislation to implement a $20 vehicle license fee for two years, referred to as the Congestion Relief charge. This allowed King County Metro to avoid cutting 17% of bus service in King County. However, the authorizing legislation passed by the state legislature required a 2/3 majority vote for the Council to pass the fee. Consequently, in order to pass, a deal was required to eliminate the Free Ride Zone. Seattle was paying $400,000 for the cost of the operations, below King County Metro’s $2.2 million operating cost.

On a broader level, the Congestion Relief charge was authorized for two years, until the end of 2013, so unless the state legislature takes action in 2013, the prospect of deep cuts still exists. I supported finding a permanent solution in the state legislature this session, but efforts were unsuccessful.

Click here for information on changes to riding buses downtown such as a changeover to a pay-on-entry system at all times. Metro will ask passengers to enter through the front door and exit via the rear door, to reduce the amount of time buses spend at each stop.

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This morning, the Governing Board of the Committee to End Homelessness (of which I’m a member) received a visit from a lot folks who don’t normally attend to these meetings.  The group calls itself “Occupy the Committee to End Homelessness.”  They are people who are concerned that since the 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness began, we’ve seen 25% more people without any shelter at all and a 7% increase in the numbers of people staying in shelter.  I agree that we need to do more to address the immediate survival needs of the approximately 1,900 people in Seattle sleeping outdoors without shelter.  For this reason, I asked that members of this group be given time on their agenda to speak to their goals.

This afternoon, in my Housing, Human Services, Health, and Culture Committee, I hosted a roundtable discussion with representatives from two landlord trade organizations – the Rental Housing Association (RHA) and the Washington Multi-Familiy Housing Association (WMFHA), Seattle King County Public Health, Columbia Legal Services, the Associated Students of the University of Washington, and another landlord with a unique perspective on rental housing inspections.

We started off reviewing the many points of agreement.  The major point that the Council has yet to determine is if your program goals are to a. get better information on numbers of illegal and substandard rental properties and b. have fewer Seattle residents live in substandard housing and c. have a self-sustaining, revenue-neutral program, how many rental properties should be subject to interior inspection?   Today was a good opportunity to hear the proposal of the 2 major landlord trade associations and the response of the other stakeholders to that proposal.  RHA and WMFHA propose inspecting a random 5% of units every year and believe that this will be sufficient to ensure that most landlords do not rent units with health and safety violations.   This may be true.  But it’s already true that most landlords do not rent units with health and safety violations.  I support a program that finds as many of the unsafe units as we can, so we can make those units safe for the families living in them.

If you’d like to watch the meeting, you can catch it here, and starting watching about 46 minutes in.

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