After a month and a half in office, Mayor Katie Wilson delivered her first wide-ranging look at Seattle in a speech at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute. Three issues dominated the speech – public safety, homelessness, and affordability.
Early in her address, she expressed her sadness that two Rainier Beach High School students were shot to death while waiting for a bus after school. She also highlighted recent shootings in Chinatown International District and in Pioneer Square.
“How can students be expected to learn if you are worried, as one young woman told me, that if you leave school for lunch, you might never come back? How can you be expected to concentrate in class if you’re living in a constant state of grief or fear? How can you be expected to thrive when you’ve seen so much tragedy and not nearly enough hope, and opportunity, and joy? We have to do better for our kids.”
Wilson declared that “my job is to take action,” and she outlined specific steps to reduce violence, including:
- Implementing an intensive stabilization plan through the end of the school year to reduce conflict and prevent retaliation;
- Restoring late night police patrols in the Chinatown International District;
- Developing a robust and multi-pronged gun violence strategy, under the leadership of Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes and other SPD leaders who “bring extensive experience in gun violence reduction that will be invaluable in this effort.”
She also committed to carefully review the City’s planned expansion of surveillance cameras. While she said she remains concerned about the data security and privacy issues raised by the cameras, she has also heard the voices of people who want gun violence reduced in their neighborhoods. She promised to collect the best information available to guide this decision.
Next, the Mayor turned to the issue of homelessness, another area where she said, “we are falling short.”
“We have to make sure that everyone can access and enjoy our parks, trails, sidewalks, and other public spaces. And we can’t just keep moving people from place to place and calling that progress.”
So, the Mayor committed to prioritizing keeping parks, trails, and public spaces available for all to enjoy. She continued that she would prioritize encampment removals based on “safety issues and neighborhood impacts. . . I’m committed to minimizing harm to people living in encampments at the same time as I take seriously the City’s mandate to keep public spaces open and accessible for their intended use.”
She highlighted her efforts to expand shelters with services, tiny homes, and other housing for the homeless, “exploring every possible administrative and legal tool we have to accelerate the expansion of emergency housing and shelter.”
She admitted putting off any discussion of taxes and revenue, saying that her staff is hard at work combing through the budget at this point. Instead of attaching price tags to her ideas and goals, she explained “there’s a lot more to be gained by starting that conversation by looking at what we need and where we want to be, then figuring out how to get there.”
Wilson shared how her experience as an organizer guides her:
“I came to the job of mayor as an organizer and a coalition builder. And when you build a campaign to make progress on an issue, you start by bringing people together around the biggest vision possible. You find consensus where you can. You attract more people. You move forward. You make some gains. Maybe you don’t get everything you wanted, but when you accomplish things, you raise expectations, and you set the stage to achieve even more.”
She also expressly welcomed the voices of employers, saying “we want you at the table. We can build a city that’s more affordable and safer.”
Mayor Wilson admitted that she is a new football fan, with the NFC Championship game at Lumen Field being the first she’s seen in person. She closed with her vision for Seattle.
“The parade last week was an amazing experience, just seeing that spirit where everyone was united, joyfully celebrating our city. And that feeling of unity, and pride, and celebration – that’s what I want to cultivate all year round. And it’s how I want my term to be judged. I want to be judged on whether people are feeling excited to live here, whether they love their neighborhoods, enjoy our parks and public spaces, and feel free to live their lives and pursue their dreams. I want to be judged on whether we are living our values as a welcoming city. Whether people are excited to start a business. To have a family. To retire. To celebrate. To just be who they are in all of their beautiful complexity.”
