Podcasts about white center

Isaac and Tyler explore discuss the history and significance of LGBTQ+ neighborhoods. From the origins in post-WWII America to vibrant communities like Seattle's Capitol Hill and budding areas like White Center, they delve into why these spaces are crucial for cultural expression and community support. They also discuss their own experiences navigating these neighborhoods, share a funny holiday party mishap, and catch up with Ariel.Join us on all major socials @nogaysinmontana for exclusive content!

Washington may establish a minimum amount of time for school lunch breaks. Jay Inslee reiterated his calls for a wealth tax in his final State of the State address. Democrats tried to claim Pete Hegseth in unqualified to be Secretary of Defense due to the lack of people he has supervised. // Big Local: Two teenage girls are continually robbing a Mount Vernon grocery store. A White Center bar owner is at his wit’s end after a second burglary in 6 months. Marysville middle school is implementing a mock trial program. // An Oscar-nominated actor says there’s systemic racism in Hollywood.

In this episode of Talk With a Doc, we delve into a remarkable story of resilience and innovation. Howard "H" White, the man instrumental in building the iconic Jordan Brand at Nike, Inc., is now championing a new cause--the Howard "H" White Center for Cardiac Amyloidosis. Join host Jennifer Semenza as she speaks with Dr. Jacob Abraham, section head for advanced heart failure, and Dr. Jenna Kay, medical director of the new Howard “H” White Center for Cardiac Amyloidosis, both from the Providence Heart Institute. They are joined by center namesake, Howard "H" White, Vice President for NIKE Inc.'s Jordan Brand, and heart transplant recipient. The Howard “H” White Center was established in honor of White, who relied on the expert care at Providence Heart Institute  in 2017 when he was diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis—a progressive disease that hampers the heart's ability to pump effectively. This often under-diagnosed condition deserves significant attention, prompting Providence to launch this new center to support early detection, research, and treatment.With NBA legend Michael Jordan donating $1 million in support – along with donations from many patients and leaders in entertainment, sports and business – the center aims to improve healthcare equity, particularly as cardiac amyloidosis disproportionately affects the Black community.Tune in as our panel of experts shines a light on this vital health issue and the new initiatives at the Howard "H" White Center for Cardiac Amyloidosis.To learn more about the Howard "H" White Center for the Cardiac Amyloidosis, visit: Providence Heart Institute: Howard White Center 

Send us a text Are you ready to get an in-depth look into navigating kink and non-monogamy together? This episode is your ultimate guide to understanding the fascinating intersection of kink, polyamory, and non-monogamous relationships. I'm sitting down with Still, a veteran kink community organizer and co-host of Tasty!—South Seattle's monitored monthly kink night at The Lumber Yard Bar. Together, we unpack what it really takes to create safe, trusting, and authentic experiences in these diverse communities. What You'll Learn:How Kink, Polyamory, and Swinging Communities Overlap: Discover the surprising similarities and shared practices that bring these communities together.The Power of Clear Boundaries and Pre-Negotiation: Why setting expectations before play is key to building trust and avoiding misunderstandings.Managing Jealousy and Embracing Compersion: Get practical tips on how to navigate the tricky emotions that can arise in non-monogamous dynamics.Safety Tips for Newcomers to Kink Events: From vetting events to understanding the role of dungeon monitors, learn how to make your first kink experience a positive one.The Role of Dungeon Monitors in Creating Safe Spaces: Explore how community support and safety protocols help protect everyone involved.About Our Guest: With over a decade of experience in kink organizing and event production, Still brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. As the co-host of South Seattle's Tasty! Kink Night at The Lumber Yard Bar, they're passionate about creating inclusive, educational, and safe spaces for exploring alternative relationship styles. If you're curious about BDSM or interested in broadening your understanding of non-monogamy, this episode is packed with valuable insights and expert advice. Visit the Lumberyard bar in White Center every first Thursday of the month to attend the public monitored kink night event co-hosted by Still. Listen Now: This episode is for anyone, whether you're new to the world of alternative relationship structures or a seasoned participant. Tune in for an honest, insightful, and judgment-free discussion that offers fresh perspectives on trust, communication, and self-discovery.Tune in now and subscribe to "Nope! We're Not Monogamous" so you never miss an episode! Support the show

In part two of our special series “Celebrating Seattle”  in collaboration with Visit Seattle TWM podcast host Mike Schibel is joined again by the acclaimed bilingual travel journalist Jeannette Ceja.  For any traveler, the heart of a destination lies within its people and community. We had the privilege of connecting with remarkable small business owners within the Hispanic, Latino, and BIPOC communities. Exploring hidden treasures, perhaps not yet on the visitor map but beloved by locals, was a true delight. We enjoyed a fantastic cup of coffee on a quintessential cozy Seattle morning at the Station Coffee Shop, where we had the pleasure of conversing with Co-Owner Luis Rodriguez. Luis, who moved to Seattle over thirty years ago from Baja Mexico, shared with us the profound importance of owning a coffee shop—to inspire pride in his children and demonstrate to the youth in the community that they can achieve anything. In Seattle's White Center neighborhood, we ventured to the Salvadorean Bakery, founded by sisters Ana Castro and Aminta Elgin, originally from El Salvador. This establishment, comprising a restaurant, bakery, and market, stands as a pillar in the community. From authentic pupusas to heavenly baked goods, it's no wonder Seattleites rave about this bakery. Having a local guide is invaluable, and we were fortunate to have Laura Clise from Intentionalist show us the diverse tapestry of small businesses and the passionate individuals behind them. Understanding how our everyday choices—where we dine, drink, and shop—impact the places we visit is truly enlightening. Our Seattle journey concluded with a toast alongside Ken Dillon, owner of Footprint Wine Tap, the city's first sustainable keg wine-on-tap bar. The inviting ambiance, stellar wine selection, and warm locals made leaving this spot a challenge. For all your Seattle travel needs and cozy season deals, visit VisitSeattle.org Part three of our special series is coming up with a live podcast recording with acclaimed Chef Kristi Brown.

Rasheed Smallwood and Peanutt Ngeth are the perfect people to talk to about What's Up in the community.  Through their work at the Log Cabin and with Highly Hated, they continually create space that empower young people to discover and become their absolute, awesome self...and they're gonna have fun doing it!  So, they've got a lot going on and we are taking this opportunity to share what they're planning for our children & youth this spring, summer and even a few events into the fall! Everything from Culture Connection to a wild Kick Ball Tournament in August!  You KNOW you want in on that!!   Make sure to follow @highlyhatedfoundation and @atthelogcabin on IG to stay up and in the know!      Recorded at Studio B  

Washington State Senator Joe Nguyen joins the Chino Y Chicano to talk about the critical issues facing lawmakers in the 2024 legislative session. Nguyen is a Democrat. He was elected to the state senate in 2019. He  represents the 34th District which includes White Center, West Seattle, Vashon Island, and part of Burien.  Nguyen is chair of the Senate Environment, Energy & Technology CommitteeI. In this session, he will play a major role in writing the state budget. Read: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/sinclair-nixes-univision-affiliation-ending-local-spanish-broadcasts/Read: https://www.chronline.com/stories/group-of-washington-state-faith-and-community-leaders-call-for-cease-fire-in-israel-hamas-war,329305Read: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/lahaina-fire-families.html#:~:text=The%20F.B.I.,survivors%20wonder%20what%20comes%20next.: Read:https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/apr/15/fentanyl-involved-in-more-than-half-of-overdose-de/Read: https://pharmacy.wsu.edu/2021/08/23/how-one-professor-is-combating-a-silent-epidemic-in-eastern-washington/Read:https://www.courts.wa.gov/appellate_trial_courts/supreme/bios/?fa=scbios.display_file&fileID=gonzalezRead: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/mental-health/seattle-libraries-transit-branch-into-social-work-to-take-on-mental-health-drug-use/: Read:https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/buoyed-by-poll-seattle-mayor-harrell-should-go-big-on-public-safety/Read: https://crosscut.com/news/2023/01/two-seattle-asian-american-community-newspapers-go-out-printRead: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/leesa-manion-sworn-in-as-king-county-prosecuting-attorney/Read: The Best & Worst Awards for 2022https://i0.wp.com/nwasianweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/04-05-Matt-and-Gei-1.jpgRead Marcus Harrison Green's Seattle's Times column about Bl...

Chris Sullivan with a story of Treehouse helping a foster teen in school // Julie and Peter Metzger on how to have the difficult conversations with your kids about puberty and body health // Feliks Banel with All Over The Map - A town in British Columbia looks to save a local landmark // Margaret Brennan on the latest US aid in Gaza // Heather Crandall on why the White Center Food Bank needs so much help // Travis Mayfield commentary on celebrating Hanukah as someone who is not Jewish // Gee Scott on the Seahawks rematch against the 49ers on Sunday // Pete Carroll Preview: Gearing up for the Seahawks Week 14 matchup against the 49ers // Micki Gamez on the prevalence of older men matching up with younger women in 2023

On this Election 2023 re-air, Crystal chats with Teresa Mosqueda about her campaign for King County Council District 8 - why she decided to run, the experience and lessons she'll bring to the County from serving on Seattle City Council, and her thoughts on addressing progressive revenue options, public service wage equity and morale, housing and homelessness, public safety, transit rider experience, climate change, and budget transparency. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Teresa Mosqueda at @TeresaCMosqueda.   Teresa Mosqueda As a Progressive Labor Democrat, Teresa Mosqueda is committed to creating healthy and safe communities, investing in working families through job training, childcare and transit access, and developing more affordable housing for all residents. She brings a proven track record of successfully passing progressive policies and building broad and inclusive coalitions. Teresa was named one of Seattle's Most Influential People 2018 for acting with urgency upon getting elected, received the Ady Barkan Progressive Champion Award from Local Progress in 2019; and earned national attention by leading the passage of JumpStart progressive revenue to invest in housing, economic resilience, green new deal investments, and equitable development. Prior to elected office Teresa worked on community health policies from SeaMar to the Children's Alliance, and championed workers' rights at the WA State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, where she helped lead state's minimum wage increase, paid sick leave, farmworker protections, workplace safety standards, and launched the Path to Power candidate training with the AFL-CIO.   Resources Campaign Website - Teresa Mosqueda   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. I am very excited today to have joining us - current Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who is a candidate for King County Council District 8, which covers Seattle - including West Seattle, South Park, Georgetown, Chinatown International District, and First Hill - as well as Burien, part of Tukwila, and unincorporated King County - in White Center and Vashon Island. Welcome to the program - welcome back. [00:01:22] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much for having me back - I appreciate it. [00:01:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I guess the first question is - what made you decide to run for King County Council after being on the Seattle City Council? [00:01:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really, really honored to be able to serve the full City of Seattle - 775,000 residents at this point - to be able to pass progressive policies like progressive revenue through JumpStart, Green New Deal and affordable housing that it was funding, to be able to quadruple the investments in affordable housing, to expand worker protections. But the truth is, we know that much of the population that I was elected by - the folks that I really center in my public policy - also work and have family outside of the City of Seattle. And in many ways, I want to build on what I've been able to accomplish in Seattle - investments in affordable housing, investments in new career pathways, good union jobs, to expand on the childcare and working family supports that I've centered in my work on City Council. But in order to reach the broader population of working families who are just outside of Seattle's borders but may work in Seattle and come in and out of the City - I want to create greater equity and stability across our region - the County is the place to do it. And in terms of stability, the County is the only place that has purview over public health, has the purse strings for behavioral health investments. And so if I want to complement efforts to try to house folks and create long-term housing stability, especially for our most vulnerable community members, the County is the place to do that - through investments in behavioral health, by sitting on the Public Health Board, by being directly involved in the budget that has purview over public health and behavioral health investments. I see it as an extension of my work at the City to create housed and healthy communities. And it actually goes full circle back to my roots where I started my career in community health. It is exciting opportunity, and I see it as a growth and expansion of the work that we've done in Seattle. [00:03:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talk about progressive revenue - the JumpStart Tax, which is a really, really important source of revenue that has been so helpful for businesses in the City, for residents, so many people in need - and has been a benefit to the City, especially in this time of a budget downturn in that the JumpStart Tax helped to bail out a budget shortfall there. So this revenue seemed to come just in time. You had to fight for it. You led the fight for it. What lessons do you take out of that fight to the County, and what progressive revenue options are there at the county level that you would be willing to pursue? [00:04:05] Teresa Mosqueda: I think one major lesson is how I've approached building these big progressive policies that have not only earned the majority of votes, but the vast majority - if not unanimous vote sometimes - that have withstood the test of time, have not been overturned, and have not been overturned by legislative councilmatic action nor by the courts. I will take with me to King County the ability to build these broad coalitions. And think about JumpStart - who was there when we launched it? It was ironworkers and hardhats, along with business entrepreneurs from both small and large business, with community and housing advocates standing collectively together to say - We will not only stand by this progressive revenue, we will stand by it knowing that it's five times the amount of the previous policy and it's twice as long. That's a huge effort that took place to try to get people on the same page, and we had to - with growing income inequality, growing needs, an increase in our population. There was no other option. This had to succeed, and so I will take that same approach to King County Council. So much is on the needs list right now in the "wake" of the global pandemic. We have the ongoing shadow pandemic. We have increased needs for mental health and community health investments. We have increased needs for food security and housing stability. There is not an alternative. We must invest more and we must do it in a way that withstands the test of time, like I've done on Seattle City Council. So for me, it's the how I bring people together that I will bring to King County Council. And I think it's also the what - not being afraid to push the envelope on what's possible. Many people said it was impossible to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights - and we got sued, and we won. People said it was impossible to legislate having hotel workers get access to guaranteed healthcare at the gold level, protections from retaliation, maximum workload. We not only passed that in legislation, but we withstood that in the court. And the same is true of JumpStart. We withstood multiple litigation attempts to try to take away JumpStart, and it's withstood the test of time. And I'm excited to see what else we can do in a city that sees so much growth but incredible inequity across our region - to bring people together to address these pressing needs. [00:06:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talked about housing and homelessness, and one thing called out by experts as a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover their cost of living. Do you believe our local service providers, a lot of whom are nonprofits, have a responsibility to pay living wages for the area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level? [00:06:54] Teresa Mosqueda: Yeah, two things I would say. One is - absolutely, we need to make sure that folks who are working on the frontline as human service providers - think folks who are the counselors to youth, or people who have mental health or substance abuse needs that we need to help address so that they can get stably housed, think about services to our vets and seniors. These are workers on the frontline who rely on relationships and have skills, expertise in the human service category. They need to have investments in these deeply needed services. And in order for us to create greater stability, we need to be paying them living wages. I say "we" - because this is not about the nonprofits needing to pay them more. It is about we, the public entities, needing to increase our contracts to these organizations who then employ people to be on the frontline. For better or worse, we have a human services system that has largely relied on contracting out critical services that are arguably public services. They are supported by public dollars, and we, public officials, have a responsibility to pay those organizations enough so that they can invest in the wages for frontline workers. That is what I have tried to do at Seattle City Council. The first year that I came in at Seattle City Council, the Human Services Coalition came to me and said - We have not had a cost of living increase in 10 years. To not have a COLA in 10 years for most workers in our region and across the country is unheard of, but it's especially unheard of for the very folks on the frontline trying to address the most pressing crisis in our country right now - and that is housing instability and homeless services. So we worked in 2019, and we passed the Human Services cost of living adjustment - that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what needs to be addressed. The historic and chronic underfunding of these positions still needs to be addressed. We are not going to be able to close this gap of 40, 50, 60% turnover in our critical organizational partners, organizations, if we don't address the wage stability issue. So I think actually going to the County and bringing that experience of having worked directly with the human service providers and hearing their stories about why it was so critical not only to have a cost of living adjustment, but to get at this chronic underfunding is going to be really coming at a pivotal moment. Seattle does have a cost of living adjustment. I want to bring that cost of living adjustment to King County and collectively with Seattle, I want to work to address the underpayment for human service providers as well. [00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: There's been a lot of action when it comes to addressing housing and homelessness from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to new legislation, and potentially even more legislation coming out through the end of this legislative session. We're currently recording this in mid-April, so it may come out a little bit further when there's a definitive answer for everything that happens. But amid a lot of this work that is currently being implemented or has just been authorized, there's a lot in process but still seemingly a lot more that needs to be done. What would your top priorities be to make a noticeable and meaningful difference in both homelessness and housing affordability if you're elected to this position? [00:10:11] Teresa Mosqueda: Resources for housing is critically needed across King County. Resources will help local jurisdictions be able to implement the new requirements that are going to be coming forth from our State Legislature, which - I want to thank our State legislative members - every year they go to Olympia and every year we ask them to be bold - be bold on housing solutions, recognizing that housing is the solution to being houseless. Housing helps people who have multiple compounding factors get healthy, get stable, and be productive members of our community. Housing is the solution to this biggest crisis that we see, not only in Seattle and King County, up and down the West Coast, but across our entire country. We have not built enough housing to house our current population plus the population who will continue to come to our region. So one of the things that I think I can take to the County is the desire to make sure that local jurisdictions, whether it's Burien or Tukwila, or unincorporated areas like in Vashon and Maury Island or in White Center - that they have resources as well to help build the type of housing that's being requested from the State Legislature - to do so in accordance with their Comprehensive Plan so that people can implement it in the time frame that works for those local jurisdictions, but to help them take away the barrier of not having enough resources. Seattle is unique in that we have pushed forward different resources. We have different types of tax revenues - thanks to JumpStart, for example - but in areas that don't have those type of resources, I hope the County can continue to be a good partner, in addition to the state, to build the type of diverse housing that we're now going to be required to build and hopefully we can do even more. The State Legislature is actually creating a new floor. We should be building upon that, and where we can go higher and denser - that is good for the local environment, it is good for the local economy, it's good for the health of workers and small businesses. And it's what I've heard from Vashon Island to Tukwila - people have said, "We don't have enough workforce housing." Small business owners have said, "I don't have enough workers in this area because they can't afford to live here." So I want to hopefully break down misperceptions about what type of housing we're talking about. We're talking about housing for seniors and vets, kiddos, youth, workers. We're talking about supporting the creation of that housing with additional revenue - that's one of the things I'd like to bring to the County. And to also recognize that when we have diverse economies that are prosperous, it's because workers can live next to their place of employment. Workers can walk to their childcare. We don't have time to spend two hours in the car commuting back and forth - that's not good for our health, our family's health, and it sure isn't good for the health of our planet. So it's a win-win-win, and I think that's something that I can really bring in as a County Councilmember - the knowledge that these local jurisdictions want to do more, but sometimes are limited with their resources. And wherever I can, I want to help step up and provide that support. [00:13:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Public safety has also been an area where the County continues to make a lot of news, has a lot of responsibility - they operate a jail, and that has itself made a lot of news. Over the past couple years throughout the pandemic, some of the employees of the jails - the guards - other people, the Public Defenders Association have called out overcrowding conditions, unsafe conditions in the jail. There's been times where the jail has not had clean water, several illness outbreaks, people not being treated correctly. It seems to be a really bad situation. Recently, the King County Council just voted to extend a contract to rent additional beds from a SCORE facility in Des Moines. This, during a backdrop of events where the King County Executive has made a promise to close the King County Jail, but it seems like we're getting further away from that, or at least not getting closer to that. Would you have voted to extend the SCORE contract? And should we close the jail? What is your vision for the short term? [00:14:17] Teresa Mosqueda: I think that the move to close down a jail that's both outdated and unsafe is not only good for the inmates, it's good for the folks who are working there. I think this is another example of where there's a false perception of sides. People who work within the jail, as well as those who are incarcerated, have expressed their not only horror when seeing mold and deterioration of the building, but it is extremely unsafe as well - as you mentioned - due to overcrowding. There's a few things that I think we can do. Number one, we should address upstream - who was being sent to these facilities in the first place. In a presentation that the Seattle City Council received from the City Attorney's Office, there was a large number of people who were initially booked and jailed, and ultimately were released because there was no grounds to put forward charges. And I think we need to stop the habit or the practice of putting folks in that situation to begin with. Even if they are not incarcerated for long periods of time, the fact that people are being jailed - especially youth - creates consequences down the road, mental health consequences, consequences for your housing, for your livelihood, your employment. And the negative impact of just being booked in the first place - both for the physical health of somebody, but also the trajectory of their life - is quantifiable. It is known, and we should stop that practice early. I agree with the effort to move folks into a situation that is healthier, but I also want to continue to look at how we can reduce the chance that someone is ever incarcerated in the first place, invest more in restorative justice practices. I'm optimistic by some of the conversations I've heard from folks in the community, specifically in Burien, about the ways in which some of the initial conversations have taken place with the Burien City Police Chief Ted Boe, and some of the commitments that have been made to try to look at restorative justice differently. And I think that holistically we need to look at what leads someone to be in that situation in the first place and back up to see what additional community investments we can be making so that people can have greater access to economic security, community safety, and reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with the carceral system to begin with. [00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, or for people who are considering this voting decision and who are looking around and who are feeling unsafe, and who are not quite sure what the right direction is to move forward, or what can be done but feel like something should be done - what is your message to them? And what can make us all safer? [00:17:01] Teresa Mosqueda: There's a few things that I think have really come to light, especially during the pandemic. We tell people to stay home to stay healthy. Well, if people don't have a home, they can't stay healthy. If we can think about the increased situation where many of us have probably seen loved ones in our lives - whether it's family members or friends - who have turned to substances to cope, to self-medicate with the stress, the trauma, the isolation that has only increased during the pandemic. I hope there's greater empathy across our community and across our country for why people may be self-medicating to begin with. And I think if we think about these recent examples of where we have seen people become more unstable in their housing situation or turn to substances because of increasing stress and pressure, that hopefully there's greater empathy for why it is so critical that we invest upstream. It is not an either/or - it's creating greater balance with how we invest in community safety, in what we know equals the social determinants of health. When we invest in housing, it helps reduce the chance that someone is going to engage in criminal activities later in life. When we invest in early learning, in job opportunities, in youth interactive programs, when we invest in even gun reduction and youth violence reduction strategies, it helps create healthier individuals and healthier populations, reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with an officer to begin with. These are public safety investments, and they shouldn't be seen as a separate silo from "traditional safety." It actually saves lives, and there's a huge return on investment when we make some of these upstream program policies a priority. I think it actually creates healthier communities, and for those who are looking at it through the economic lens, healthier economies - knowing that that return on investment has been proven time and time again. And it's good for individuals and community health as well. [00:19:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, there's a shortage of workers across the board - certainly King County is included in this shortage of county workers in several areas, including in many front-line positions that impact public safety - maintenance, care, health - all of those that are crucial to delivering services and help that the residents of the County need. We've seen hiring, retention, and referral bonuses for public safety employees. Do you think we should be considering those for other employees? [00:19:39] Teresa Mosqueda: Absolutely. This is part of the conversation that I raised while at Seattle City Council. There is, I think, a detrimental impact to workplace morale across public servants when we're not uniformly treating people the same. It's not what I feel, it's not that that's my perception - that's actually coming from workers within the City of Seattle who completed a survey that our Human Resources Department, in addition to Seattle Police Department and other Seattle agencies, completed to ask, "What would you like to see? How would you feel if certain employees got a hiring bonus or retention bonus?" And overwhelmingly, workers in public service said that they thought that this would hurt morale - if existing public servants weren't treated the same. I mentioned that in the Human Services category, there's a 40% to 60% turnover rate for our nonprofit organizations who are helping folks on the frontline. There's a huge turnover rate, as well, within our Human Services Department - we've had to freeze the hiring, and reduce hours, and reduce positions. Public libraries, community centers are front-facing programs for the community during COVID and we are slowly starting to scale those back up, but they're nowhere at capacity right now. And what workers themselves have said within the City of Seattle is - they want to see greater strategies for retention. Investments in childcare keeps coming up. Investments in more affordable housing keeps coming up. And if you want to look specifically at the Seattle Police Department, the officers themselves said that they did not think that hiring bonuses was the way to address retention and morale issues - that played out in their comments in the press, as well as the survey results that we saw. I think that there's a more equitable approach that we should be taking. I think that we should be looking at how we recruit and train and incentivize people to come to public service overall, whether that means you're coming in to work as a firefighter or a police officer, or whether that means that we want to recruit you to be serving the public in libraries or as a lifeguard - which we don't have enough of - or as a childcare provider, which we don't have enough of. We should be looking across the board at these public service programs and figuring out ways to both address retention and morale, and to do so equitably. And to listen to what workers have said - they want housing, they want childcare, they want regular and routine transit. And they want us to, especially within the City of Seattle, address disparity in wages for folks of color and women compared to their counterparts. Those are some things that I think we should be taking on more seriously. [00:22:17] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. Now, you talk about people saying they want regular and routine transit. Lots of people want that. Lots of people - more importantly - need that, are relying on that. And there's been lots of talk about the rider experience around safety on transit, but also about the availability and accessibility of service and all-day service - not just some of those commuter-centric commute-time service bumps that we've seen. What would your approach to Metro be as a councilmember? [00:22:50] Teresa Mosqueda: So I appreciate that you raise safety because it is an issue that comes up for riders as well as the drivers. Members of ATU, who drive buses around King County, have expressed increased concern around their safety. Whether they're driving in the day or night - given COVID has increased interpersonal violence across our country, they are on the receiving end of that as well. So I'm excited to talk with ATU, with members who have been out on the frontline as our bus drivers, as well as riders to talk about how we can improve safety for everyone. That is - again, on the preventative side, trying to figure out ways that structurally and through public policy we can ensure that riders and drivers are safe. There's also two things that drivers have talked to me about and folks within King County Metro. They say there's a lot of focus on new routes and how do we expand routes - routes, routes, routes - which I also agree with. But they've also brought up that we need to continue to invest in the people, maintenance, and operation to make sure that there's enough people to be working on existing routes and new routes to come. Similar to housing, we don't want to just build units. We want to make sure that for those who need personnel in those units to make sure that folks stay stably housed, we're investing in the workforce to ensure that that housing, that that unit is successful. We need to be looking at investments in the workforce, recruiting folks to come to these good living wage union jobs, and to be thinking about how we improve retention and stability as well. And for as far as maintenance is concerned - thinking more about how we can invest in greener fleets, greener maintenance opportunities, and ensure that those vehicles are running well and routinely. So those are two of the things that have come directly from the frontline drivers themselves. And then more broadly - workers. You mentioned all-day services. I would also argue all-night services to the degree that we can add additional stops, because many of the childcare providers who are coming in early in the morning, construction workers who are coming in early in the morning, janitors who might be going out late at night, talk about how they have to rely on vehicles because there are not times that the buses are showing up to get them to work and back home in time. So I think that it's multi-prong. But again, I think the common ground here is that the workers in this sector are agreeing with the recipients of the service. And collectively, I'm hoping that we can address safety, workforce needs, and increase routes as well. [00:25:23] Crystal Fincher: Definitely, and I really appreciate you bringing up the workforce needs. I know a couple people who use transit regularly but ended up getting vehicles because of the unpredictable cancellations due to staff shortages, whether it's maintenance or drivers, just making it unreliable to get to work on time. And already the time taken to commute that way is a lot, so that would improve the experience greatly - definitely appreciate that. Transit is also very, very important to achieving our climate goals. And by most measures, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals - while we're experiencing devastating impacts from climate change, including extreme heat and cold, wildfires, floods. What are your highest-priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 climate goals? [00:26:17] Teresa Mosqueda: One thing might surprise folks in that category - probably not a huge surprise for folks who have heard me talk before - but I think if we can invest in additional housing, dense housing across our region, it will actually reduce CO2 emissions. And it's really common sense, right? We are the third-highest mega-commuter city or region in the nation. We have more people who are commuting back and forth to work than most of the country. And the reason is because they can't afford to find a house near their place of employment. If CO2 emissions from cars - single-occupancy cars - is the number-one contributor to pollution in our region, I believe that is at the top of our list for helping to reduce our carbon footprint across the country and across the globe. We should be increasing density. We should see it not only as a good economic stimulant, what's right to do for workers and working families, but it is one of the best things that we could also do for our climate. I think that there's - again, a misperception or a false divide between folks who are environmentalists and want to see more trees, and their perception that additional housing or density takes that away. It does not. We can both create setbacks for higher buildings and use the airspace to create living opportunities, while we plant additional trees and preserve old growth. I've gone to at least three ribbon-cutting ceremonies for Habitat for Humanity, who created - basically - townhouses connected altogether. We don't have a lot of row houses in Seattle, but row houses, if you will, around trees created in the shape of a U with old-growth trees in the middle - allowing for greater shade, and a play area for kiddos, and a place to sit for elders. It is very much possible to build dense housing options and preserve old growth while planting new trees. So I think in addition to creating density, we can plant more trees. We can do more to incentivize good living-wage jobs in industries that are cleaner. I heard from our friends in Georgetown Community Center that they had to beg and plead for one of the local industries to incorporate more greener options for a glass manufacturer down there. And we should simultaneously be seeing the opportunity to promote good jobs as a requirement for also promoting good green jobs. And I worked very hard with members of both the environmental community and the labor community in the past to push Just Transition policies - to ensure that as we transition to greener economies or greener manufacturing strategies, that we're preserving good living-wage jobs and, even better, preserving good union living-wage jobs. So I look forward to making sure that we have denser cities, that we have greener cities, and that we have greener industries. [00:29:13] Crystal Fincher: Now, King County does incremental budgeting, making it more challenging for people to understand how county funds are allocated in a base budget. The budget is known as one of your areas of strength. What do you think can be done to make the budget process easier for the public to understand and influence at the county level? [00:29:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really proud of what we've been able to accomplish in Seattle. And coming from working the halls of Olympia on behalf of the Washington State Labor Council for eight years and then for three years before that with the Children's Alliance, I was used to this concept of having these biennial budgets that needed to be seen in full, that you could see the red line to know what was the investment from last year versus the upcoming year. Unfortunately, the City of Seattle doesn't have such a budget document. It's basically like single pages - page after page of narrative descriptions of what the dollars will do. That's fine for some budget notes, but what I think we are working towards in the City of Seattle - a preview for folks who love budget talk - is we're going to one day have a true biennial budget and an actual budget document where you will be able to see the red line, either additions or subtractions to specific programs so that everyone knows what is being invested in, how funding is changing, and where priorities are showing up in the budget. I am excited about being able to build on that work that I've done in Seattle, especially as Budget Chair, in some of the most pressing economic times in recent history, starting in 2020. And have been able to not only allocate millions of dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act, but also to create greater transparency in how we budget. One of the things that I think is maybe misunderstood out there is the way in which we've helped to provide transparency in the entire budget, but specifically the Seattle Police Department. It had not been exposed year-over-year that Seattle Police Department actually had about $40 million that was rolling over year-over-year on top of funding that the chief, that the mayor, that the department had acknowledged they could not use. And in a time where we saw an economic crisis on the horizon, growing needs in our community, and knew that that was $40 million that was not going to be put to use, not going into direct services for the community - and for those who wanted to see additional officers, wasn't even going to be able to use to increase the hiring plan. It's good budgeting to be able to make sure that that funding is transparently accounted for in the General Fund - and where we can deploy it to things like food, housing, childcare, economic security for small businesses that we do so. That's something I'm really proud of - that we were able to show what the full picture was, not only for that department, but for all departments. And to make some important investments in mental health services, behavioral health services, youth violence, gun violence reduction strategies - things that similarly invest in community safety, but we were able to show where those line items move. I will bring to King County Council the ability to structurally push for greater transparency for members of the public, encourage us as the legislative branch to own the separate but equal branch of government that the council is as the legislative branch, and ensure that the public has an opportunity to dive into the proposal that comes from the executive, just like the proposal that comes from the governor to the State Legislature. You receive that, you dissect it, you talk to community about what it means - and then ultimately the legislative branch reconvenes, reconfigures the budget, and presents it to the executive for a signature. It's good governance, it's good transparency. I think it's understandable from folks across whatever political spectrum - it's important to have budget transparency and accountability, and that's what I've been able to accomplish in the City of Seattle. [00:33:02] Crystal Fincher: It is, and I think there are a number of people, especially listeners to Hacks & Wonks, who do enjoy budget conversations, who would definitely look forward to more budget transparency at the County level, like you've been working towards at the City level. As we close here and as people are going to be making the decision about who they're going to be voting for for this County Council position, what is your message to voters and people listening about why they should choose you? [00:33:30] Teresa Mosqueda: I'm very thrilled to be in this race for King County Council. I think I have not only proven that I'm an effective legislator at the council level, but that I know how to center folks who have been left out of policy conversations in the room, but more importantly - follow the lead of those who've experienced the injustices over the years. We have been able to move historic, monumental, national-headline-grabbing policies within the City of Seattle in my now going into six years in Seattle City Council. And it has been done, I believe, in a collaborative way, in a way that has made transformational change, and in a way that I think has always centered - been centered on my progressive commitments to investing in working families, folks of color, and the LGBTQ community, workers to ensure that there's greater opportunity and prosperity. And creating housing and stability - that is something that is good for our entire community. I do this work because it's all about how we create healthy communities. You have to have investments in good living wage jobs and housing stability and opportunity education to have self-determination and control over your own life and your own decisions. And I think through public policy, through investments with public resources, we can create greater opportunity across our county. I am excited, as well, to be coming to this race as a woman, as a Latina, as a Chicana - poised to be the first Latina ever elected to King County Council. And with a King County population that is made up of half people of color and a quarter immigrant and refugee, it is critical that we have more voices with folks who have the lived experience coming from communities of color serving in these positions. I think that's why I've been able to effectively and efficiently move policy through so quickly - because I have put at the front of the line many of the community members who are often left out of policy discussions. I hope to bring in my commitment to working with folks who are workers, women, folks of color, members of the LGBTQ community to hear more about what we can do at King County Council. I know I have big shoes to step into with Councilmember McDermott and his commitment to public health, working with the LGBTQ community, his tenure in the State Legislature - and I'm also excited to add to that and serve our broader region and our growing needs. [00:35:59] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Councilmember Mosqueda, for spending this time with us today and having this conversation. Sincerely appreciate it, and we'll certainly be following your campaign eagerly over the next several months. Thank you. [00:36:13] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much - I appreciate it. [00:36:15] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

A little bit ago, Lisa, Christian and Frank, the Youngers of the IWC team, sat down together and were chop'n it up in Studio B!  Sharing their reflections and perspectives from being raised and living in White Center and also, their hopes about our community's future, too.        

What’s Trending: Matt Gaetz--who sided with democrats--caused chaos in the republican party and WA announces a new unintentional drug overdose database that no one will take seriously. // An elderly woman speaks after being attacked with a hammer at a light rail station and calls for more security after a White Center metro bus shooting. // Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) explains why he voted to oust Kevin McCarthy and whether or not Donald Trump should be speaker.  

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank! They discuss a poll showing that Seattle voters want a more progressive City Council, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction overseeing more and more school districts in budget crisis, gubernatorial candidate Mark Mullet getting financially backed by charter school advocates, and Bruce Harrell's ethnic media roundtable not going very well. The conversation continues with the possibility of a $19 minimum wage for unincorporated King County, internal drama within top brass of the Seattle Police Department, and reflection on a consent decree ruling that ends most federal oversight of SPD. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.   Resources “Ending Youth Incarceration with Dr. Ben Danielson of AHSHAY Center” from Hacks & Wonks   “Poll: Seattle voters want new direction on City Council” by Josh Cohen from Crosscut   “State will keep fiscal tabs on three cash-starved Washington school districts” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard   “WA Supreme Court sides with state in suit over school building costs” by Dahlia Bazzaz from The Seattle Times   “Big checks for a pro-Mullet PAC” by Paul Queary from The Washington Observer    “Harrell asks for better relations with ethnic media” by Mahlon Meyer from Northwest Asian Weekly   “King County looks at $19 minimum wage in unincorporated areas” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times   “King County Councilmembers propose $19 minimum wage for Skyway and White Center” by Guy Oron from Real Change   “Seattle police chief's alleged relationship with employee prompts inquiries, roils department” by Ashley Hiruko & Isolde Raftery from KUOW   “Judge ends most federal oversight of SPD, after 11 years and 3 chiefs” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times    Find stories that Crystal is reading here   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I welcomed Dr. Ben Danielson, director of AHSHAY (Allies and Healthier Systems for Health and Abundance in Youth) Center for an important conversation about ending youth incarceration. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review show where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long-time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. [00:01:19] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you for having me back again, Crystal. It's always a pleasure to be here reviewing the week with you. [00:01:23] Crystal Fincher: Always a pleasure and I wanna start out talking about a poll that came out this week, sponsored by Crosscut - an Elway Poll - showing that voters seem to want a more progressive City Council. What did this poll reveal? [00:01:38] Robert Cruickshank: It's a really interesting poll. Crosscut's headline says - Seattle voters want a new direction on the City Council - but if you dig down with the poll itself, it's clear that there's strong support for a more progressive direction. One of the questions they ask is - Who are you more likely to vote for? A progressive candidate, a centrist candidate, or no opinion. The progressive candidate, 49%. Centrist candidate, 37%. And no opinion, 14%. That actually matches pretty closely some of the results we saw in key City Council primary elections last month. In District 1, for example, District 4, District 6 - you saw pretty similar numbers with a progressive candidate getting close to or around 50% and a more centrist candidate getting somewhere between the upper 30s and low 40s. We have a poll, we have the actual election results from the primary - now that doesn't guarantee anything for the general election. But evidence is starting to pile up that - yes, Seattle voters do want a new direction and it's very likely they want to be a more progressive direction. We've lived for the last three years - certain media pundits and media outlets, like KOMO or The Seattle Times, pushing really hard this narrative that Seattle wants a right-wing turn, Seattle's fed up with a progressive City Council, we're fed up with homelessness, we're fed up with crime - we want to turn to the right, darn it. The poll results and the election results last month just don't support that argument at all. Yes, voters are unhappy and voters are looking at what the progressive candidates are saying and thinking - Yeah, that's how we want to solve this. Yes, we want to solve homelessness by getting people into housing. Yes, we want to solve crime by having all sorts of solutions - including alternatives to policing, alternatives to armed response - to help address this problem. And I think that some of the media outlets and Chamber of Commerce and others, who keep pushing this Seattle-wants-to-turn-right narrative, are just trying to will a story into existence, try to will that reality into existence - but voters are making it clear they're not going along with that. [00:03:28] Crystal Fincher: It really does make some of the rhetoric that we hear over and over again sound like astroturfing, sound like a marketing project - because like you said, over and over again, these election results and these polls just repeatedly tell a different story. For example, we've talked on this show before about stopping with just - Hey, are you happy with the way things are going or are you dissatisfied? And if people say they're dissatisfied, there's been this assumption - that means that they want to get rid of progressive councilmembers and progressive policy. And that has never borne out in the data. One of the questions - On the issue of homelessness, if you had to choose, what approach should have the higher priority for city government resources? One option is: Moving the tents out of parks and public areas and moving their occupants into temporary shelters - which is a nice way to say sweeps - 41%. The other option: Developing permanent housing and mental health services for people experiencing homelessness - 55%. This is not controversial - we've been talking about this on this show for quite some time, lots of people have - these are serious policies backed by evidence and it just makes sense, right? And it makes you question how deeply invested are people in the narrative that Seattle is fed up and they want a really punitive law and order, harsh lock-'em-up approach to things - that just doesn't play out. What we're gonna see in this general election, as we've seen before - it looks like we're anticipating some of the same type of communication, same type of commercial, same type of mailers trying to use those same tired depictions of homelessness as if the people who are homeless are the problem and not the fact that they don't have homes to live in. And Seattle sees that. They see that over and over again. And what we see is there is this attempt, especially around public safety rhetoric, to make it just very flat. Either you want more cops and you support cops and Blue Lives Matter and all of that, or you hate safety and you love crime and you don't want anything. And just making it either you're defund or this Antifa radical, or you're wanting more law and order on the streets. It just doesn't turn out that way. People want serious solutions. We've been doing the same things over and over again. And the public is begging these people to keep listening, but it just doesn't work. Like you said, a plurality here prefer a progressive candidate - 12 points higher than a more moderate candidate, as they put it - conservative wasn't a choice in here. Centrist and progressive - as is the way in Seattle - the way things are usually discussed. Also, when they asked about priorities - How are they evaluating candidates for City Council? It's really interesting. The top answers were: Do they support creating a new department for non-police emergency response, Do they support city funding of substance abuse treatment for people in public housing - both of those at 72%. If you're in the 60s, that's automatic win territory. 72%, it's - how wild is it that this is not on the top of everybody's agenda? Then we move down to - looking at the lower end - the lowest, actually, was: Supporting a three-year moratorium on the Jumpstart tax - that actually made people more likely to vote against someone for voting against a moratorium on that tax, which we've seen the Chamber float and other allied business interests trying to siphon some of that money or reduce the tax that they're paying. And voters are clearly saying no. And people who advocate for that are going to be hurt by taking that position in this general election. So this is just really interesting. One of these questions: Support for Bruce Harrell's agenda. One, I want someone to define what that agenda is - great to ask that in a vague way - what does that mean? And I would love for people to talk - when they talk about the mayor's agenda, Bruce Harrell's agenda - define what that is. I think that's a tougher task than many people might assume at first glance. What else did you see here? [00:07:38] Robert Cruickshank: There are a couple of things that stood out. You talked about taxes. They asked - How should Seattle cover a budget shortfall? 63% want a new business tax, 60% are willing to tax themselves - this just bolsters the point you just made that, contrary to what the Chamber wants, there's no support out there for slashing business taxes. We want to tax the rich more. And so that's another reason why progressive candidates are going to do well. Something you said resonated about the astroturfing. And you see these efforts to try to create outrage about different public safety issues. We saw some of that this week, where Sara Nelson had a stunt press conference in Little Saigon - which is facing issues, and the community of Little Saigon deserves to be heard and deserves to have their needs addressed. That's not what Sara Nelson was there to do. She was there to have a press conference stunt where she could stand there with Tanya Woo and say - Where's Tammy Morales? Why isn't Tammy Morales here? The answer is, as Tammy Morales explained, Tammy wasn't invited because Tammy was also at the Transportation Committee hearing in City Hall doing her job and asked where's Sara Nelson? The answer is Sara Nelson's out grandstanding. She's also the same person who's floating things like moratorium on the JumpStart Tax, floating things like sweeps and crackdowns on visible drug use. Sara Nelson somehow snuck into office in 2021 and thinks somehow that the City is supporting her agenda - whatever that might be, whatever right-wing cause she has at the moment - that's not where the electorate is right now. And I think that's all they have - are stunts - because their actual agenda is unpopular. And I think you're going to start seeing - as a campaign heads into the heat of the general election, the same playbook we've often seen from more centrist candidates. And Jenny Durkan was an expert at this - of just bear-hugging progressive positions, making themselves sound more progressive than they truly are - to try to get elected because they know that's what the electorate in Seattle wants. And then once in office, the mask comes off and they turned out to be the Chamber candidate that they always were. So that's something that the actual progressive candidates are gonna have to watch out for. And voters are going to need to be very careful in discerning between these candidates. Who's just mouthing the rhetoric that they think is going to get them elected? And who's a genuine and proven commitment to these ideals? - Who's really fought hard for taxing the rich? Who's fought hard for affordable housing? Who's fought hard to get services and shelter to people who are unhoused? - rather than people who are just maybe grandstanding on it because they think that's how they're gonna win. [00:10:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think you bring up a really important point. It is that discernment. Some of the justification I've heard for people who are very invested in the "Seattle has taken a right turn" try and retcon the justification - well, voters wanted a conservative business owner and they really want that perspective on the Council. They want someone who's gonna knock heads and get tough. But people so easily forget - that's not at all how Sara Nelson ran. Sara Nelson ran as an environmentalist, as someone who wanted to reform the police department - those were her top-line messages in her communications. She wasn't talking about being a business owner, she was not talking about being tough on crime - she initially started that in the very beginning in the primary and that fell flat. And so they switched up real quick and all of the communication looked like it was coming from a progressive. They used the word "progressive" 72,000 times - Oh no, we're the real progressives here. And it didn't turn out that way. And as you said, once she was elected, the mask came off and we continue to see this over and over again. The moderate playbook, the conservative playbook is to mimic progressive. It's to use that same language. It's to talk about issues in a similar way. Leave yourself a little wiggle room to not commit, to not give a hard and fast answer to something so that when you are elected, you can say - Well, I didn't exactly say that - or - I didn't take a position on this. And we see this over and over again. I hope it doesn't happen again this time, but there's going to be a lot of money spent to try and do this again. And at some point we just have to say - We've seen this before and we've had enough, and we want people who are seriously engaging in how to solve the biggest problems that we face. Because Seattle voters are really frustrated - they are fed up, but fed up with not being listened to. I do congratulate this poll for going beyond just the - Are you happy and unhappy? - and asking the why - What direction do you want to go into? What policy solution do you prefer? And as I suspected, the answers are very enlightening and give you an eye into what voters are really thinking and considering. And I hope all of the candidates - and the electeds who aren't even on the ballot - take heed. I also want to talk about school districts - right now, just as school is starting over again - facing budget crises and just a world of hurt. What's happening here? [00:12:28] Robert Cruickshank: As schools are starting across Washington state this year, there are some schools where teachers have gone out on strike, mostly in Southwest Washington - places like Evergreen Schools in Vancouver, Camas in Clark County - and that's worth watching and we're supporting teachers. In addition, we're starting to see an even more ominous trend of districts needing the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, OSPI, to actually oversee their budgets. They need OSPI monitoring because they're in such deep financial straits, primarily because this Legislature continues to underfund our schools. The Legislature doesn't give schools enough money to cover their basic operations, especially in an era of inflation. And so you have at least three school districts that we know of so far, Marysville, La Conner, Mount Baker - these are all in Northwest Washington - are under OSPI oversight for budgets. It's the most, at any one time, in several years - since at least a great recession. OSPI is quoted as saying this is unprecedented. And they don't think it's gonna stop there. It's just the tip of the iceberg - as more and more districts face problems, as federal stimulus money goes away, as levy equalization dollars start to drop, as regionalization money - which is designed to help districts afford to pay teachers what it actually costs to live in their community - that starts to go away from the state. The state continues to underfund special education. And just this morning before we went on air, we saw the State Supreme Court ruled against the Wahkiakum School District in Southwest Washington, their case where they were trying to get the state to be held responsible for the cost of school construction. The Supreme Court said - No, the state and local governments, local districts are gonna have to share that - even though it takes 60% of voters to approve a school bond for construction, those often fail. And small communities like Wahkiakum, small logging community on the Columbia River, don't have the property tax base to keep their schools in good repair. So what we're seeing is the Legislature, and now the Supreme Court, continue to hand blow after blow to local school districts. And this is alarming, not just because it leads to cuts and even school closures - something they're considering in school districts like Seattle - that's bad enough. But when you start to see state oversight in management of districts, that's when I think red flags should really go up. There's things like appointing emergency fiscal managers - in the state of Michigan and other states where Republicans took over - that led to huge cuts to schools, where these emergency fiscal managers would come in and turn schools over to charter school operators, they tear up union contracts, they would make all sorts of cuts to libraries and music and other important services. Now, we're not seeing that in Washington state yet, but that architecture is now in place. And if the wrong person gets elected governor or the wrong party takes over the Legislature, all of a sudden these school districts could be losing local control over their basic dollars and spending to the state. So this is a unfolding crisis that the State Legislature and the Democratic majority there continue to ignore, continue to not take seriously - even though it remains in the Constitution, literally their paramount duty, to provide ample provision for funding, not just enough. The open dictionary says more than enough. No one can look at a public school district anywhere in Washington state and say schools are getting ample funding. They're just not. And this crisis is only going to grow worse. We're only going to see further cuts to schools, further closures, larger class sizes, teachers leaving - unless the State Legislature steps in. [00:16:00] Crystal Fincher: We do have to contend with the fact that this is happening with the Democratic majority, right? Even more frustrating where - this is another issue voters support in such huge numbers - adequately, amply funding education and raising the revenue because revenue is needed to amply fund education. It's really frustrating. And so I guess my question for you, because you do pay such close attention - I do recommend people follow Robert for a variety of things, but his insight on education policy is really valuable - how do we fix this? Is it all on the Legislature? Where is the fix here? [00:16:39] Robert Cruickshank: The fix is at the Legislature. Local school districts can only do so much. A 60% threshold has not been changed by the Legislature - they have the ability to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to change that, that never happens. But even more, the Legislature has also capped a local operating levy. Seattle, which has a very pro-tax population, would happily tax ourselves a lot of money to have amazing public schools. We can't do that because we're prevented by the State Legislature. And the obvious reason, of course, is Seattle has such valuable property because we have Amazon, Vulcan, other large corporate property owners here who will ensure that the Legislature doesn't do that. So we have a State Legislature and a Democratic majority that is just unwilling to take on the big corporations and the wealthy to fund our public schools. They point to the capital gains tax. And yes, that was an important victory in 2021. And it's raising almost double what was expected. But of course, there's a caveat there. They cap the amount of money that goes to the Education Legacy Trust Fund - anything above that is supposed to go to school construction, which is great - we just talked about the Supreme Court decision and how local governments and local districts in rural Washington definitely need help funding schools. That's great. But what happens when you don't have the ability to pay the teachers to go into those buildings? When you don't have the ability to provide the books, materials, the music classes, the arts classes, the small class sizes that we voted for in 2014? The Legislature proposed a wealth tax last year - 20 out of 29 Senate Democrats, 43 out of 58 House Democrats supported it as co-sponsors. Surely there were many more who weren't sponsors who were on board. The bill never even made it out of committee in either chamber. At some point, we have to look at the State Legislature and the Democrats, even the progressives - even the Democrats we like and support strongly - haven't stuck their necks out for education, haven't stepped up to say we're gonna fix this. They aren't recognizing the crisis that's there and that's what we have to do. We have to point the finger at the Legislature and go to them at their town halls, to their offices, committee meetings in Olympia, testify virtually if that's possible again in January and make it crystal clear - this is a crisis, it is dire, and you have to fix it. And the only possible source of the fix is the Legislature. [00:19:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Thank you for your insight on that, and we do have to get involved. We have to make sure they hear our voices, demanding that this happens. And while they're at it - to provide free school lunches for all school kids. Also several other states - I think we're at 11 so far - are doing the same, putting us to shame. All states should have this and so we have a lot of work to do. Also wanna talk about a candidate for governor - Mark Mullet, current sitting senator out of the 5th legislative district, being backed by charter school money. What's happening here? [00:19:42] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, Mark Mullet, a very right-wing Democrat - he probably would have been a Republican if he didn't realize that being a Democrat would get him elected more easily out there in Issaquah. He's been hostile to teachers' unions for a long time, notoriously hostile to other unions - very nearly lost his reelection in 2020 to Ingrid Anderson, a progressive nurse. Mullet only prevailed by 58 votes, but continues to act as a very right-wing Democrat. And he's always been in love with charter schools - he's been a major obstacle to getting the Legislature to fully fund our public schools. He sits on the Senate Ways and Means Committee. He works with centrist Democrats, corporate Democrats, and Republicans to try to block bills that would fund our schools. And in return, he's now gotten at least $25,000 from a charter school PAC to help fund a super PAC in support of Mark Mullet's run for governor. Polls continue to show so far that Mullet is trailing pretty badly here in the governor's race - Ferguson still has the lead, but it's early. We're well over a year away from the general election for governor. But Mullet clearly is staking his claim as the right-wing Democratic candidate, and the candidate of now folks who wanna privatize our public schools and spread charters everywhere. And as we've seen in other states, charter schools are really problematic. They don't really meet student needs on the whole. Their outcomes aren't better for students. And they're often fly-by-night operations - they'll close in the middle of a school year and then leave students just high and dry. But it's really revealing that Mullet is taking, or at least getting supported by, so much money - that's not a direct donation to his campaign, but it's clear that they are running a super PAC explicitly in support of Mark Mullet. It's a real sign - that's where his bread is buttered - by big corporations and school privatizer money. So something that I think voters are gonna wanna pay pretty close attention to as the campaign for governor starts to heat up next year. [00:21:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I do have to tell you, it is very concerning how unstable charter schools seem to be. How many - we see openings and then we see closings. And that just hardly ever happens with public schools. When it does, it's under financial duress and usually over the objections of all of the parents. But this has been something that we've seen with frequency with charter schools here in Washington. But yeah, definitely worth paying attention to that - and what that agenda is by the folks who have that super PAC and what other interests they're in-line with are really troubling. So we'll continue to pay attention to that. I also wanna talk about a story that came out - I actually think it was late last week, this is a short holiday week and so kind of trickled out - but it was a story about Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell's roundtable with some of our local ethnic media outlets. We have wonderful, rich ethnic media outlets here in Washington State - all throughout the state, definitely here in King County. And the mayor's office seemed troubled by the lack of positive stories coming out, and so invited a number of these journalists to - it looks like City Hall - to have a little roundtable conversation. How did that turn out? [00:22:56] Robert Cruickshank: Well, it's interesting. Many mayors have met with our local ethnic media - it's a good thing for them to do in and of itself - Mike McGinn did a great tour of them back when I worked with him in 2011. So it makes sense for Harrell to try to reach out, but it doesn't seem to have gone very well. And according to at least one of the reports that was there, the mayor wasn't happy about the meeting being recorded - said he could speak less freely. But I think when you're dealing with journalists, any public official should know that's how journalists like to operate - they wanna record everything. And it just seemed like the mayor wanted to make it very personal and wanted to get good coverage out of these outlets. And that's just not how you actually should be approaching these media outlets to begin with. These folks want respect, they wanna be treated as serious journalists - which they are. And I think that for a mayor to come in the way it appears Mayor Harrell did, I don't think it's gonna serve his needs and certainly not the needs of those ethnic media outlets. [00:23:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this was covered in Northwest Asian Weekly and it was really a jaw-dropping read because it does seem to start off - Bruce Harrell is a charismatic guy and there's nothing wrong with that, there's nothing wrong with wanting to open lines of communication, to air out any challenges - I think that's a positive thing. Where I think this took a bad turn was this assumption that they should put aside their professionalism, put aside the obligation they have to report - and to seek information and accountability - and just play along, go along with what he says. And the one thing that caught my eye, which maybe it didn't - well, a few things caught my eye - but one thing that I found troubling in here, which may not be an overt red flag and who knows what he actually meant by that, but there was an allusion to - Hey, there's Comcast money - anyone who works in the City of Seattle is aware of how much Comcast money there actually is in the City. But he said - Hey, the city might be able to facilitate ethnic media getting involved in Comcast channel 21, while also him saying that they were dying - which those ethnic media outlets directly challenged and he seemed to not accept or be willing to do. But dangling - Hey, there's more access, there's more information here for you if you play along. And that's the unspoken part of this. And even if that wasn't intended - I don't know what he intended - but as a public official, you have to be aware of when you're holding that much power, when you have that much control of resources and influence over people who are wielding those resources, and you have access to a bigger platform, and you're saying - Hey, I can help you out with this - there's the implication, if you aren't explicit and careful, saying - If you scratch my back too, if you ease up on the criticism, if you stop asking troubling questions. It seems like they heard that in this meeting and seemed to react - one, just mischaracterizing where they're at and they're not sitting here asking for handouts, they're not asking for anything unearned - they are professionals who put out great products, who many of us consume regularly and they're a part of our media ecosystem that too many people just leave out. And they're saying - No, we're not dying, we're here and we're thriving and we just want answers to our questions. We just want invitations to invites that other reporters are getting invites to. And there seem to be questions with that, as well as some offense taken to them asking just regular general questions. One reporter, a Black reporter from a Black media outlet, brought up - Hey, we're having a really hard time getting straight answers from your police department. Bruce Harrell is literally the executive to talk to for that - they answer to Bruce Harrell, he is in charge of the police department. And his response - You're the only one who's had that problem. I think everyone listening knows that they're not the only ones who have that problem. We've seen that across the ecosystem in various places, particularly to people who don't cover City Hall sympathetically, and that's just really troubling. You're there and you're not listening to the reporters who are reflecting their communities and trying to get information that is really important to the communities they serve. And the dismissiveness was just really troubling. [00:27:27] Robert Cruickshank: It really is. And I think it goes to the concerns that those media outlets have had for a long time. They wanna be taken seriously and deserve to be because they're serious journalists - doing serious journalism that is read and respected, not just in those communities they serve, but around the City. And yet they struggle to get invites to press conferences, they struggle to get responses from City departments, they struggle to get included in stories, they struggle to get their basic inquiries addressed. And they understand that a lot of the City's media relations folks, whether it's the mayor's office or City departments, don't always take them seriously. So to have the opportunity to sit down directly with the mayor is hugely important for these outlets - not only to show that they matter, but to get answers and to get things fixed that need to be fixed in the way the City is interacting with those media outlets. And yet for it to go this way, it just, in their minds, likely justifies a lot of concerns they had all along. It's not going to assuage them at all. And from the perspective of supporting local media outlets, it seems like this should have been handled better. Even from Bruce Harrell's own perspective, it could have been handled better. 'Cause now he's got a story that makes him look bad and raises questions about the way his office is responding to some of the most important media outlets in the City. I think it's - to insinuate that they might be dying goes right to the heart of the problem. These media outlets have been thriving for decades. And it's not easy for any media outlet to survive these days, large or small, no matter what community they serve. And the last thing they want is to be dismissed again - in this case, dismissed as potentially just on the brink of death. I mean, who knows how many of the TV stations are on the brink of death, right? Seattle Times - who knows how long the Blethen family is going to want to keep running it until the family decides to sell it out to Alden Global Capital, which will just gut everything for parts. It's important to treat these media outlets and their reporters with respect, no matter who it is in elected office or whatever City department you're in. And so I hope that the mayor's office puts that right. [00:29:29] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree. Also want to talk this week about a potential $19 minimum wage coming to unincorporated King County. What's being proposed? [00:29:42] Robert Cruickshank: King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay is proposing a $19 an hour minimum wage for unincorporated King County - so that's outside of a incorporated city. So cities like Seattle, SeaTac have obviously raised minimum wage. Tukwila has raised it, Renton - which is on the ballot this year - likely to pass. But there are about a quarter million people in King County who are not in a city. They live in a community, sometimes, or maybe they don't live in a formal community, maybe they're out in more rural parts of the county - but they're part of King County. And what Girmay is recognizing is there's an opportunity to help them. So what he wants to do is raise the minimum wage for those parts of King County, for those 250,000 people - which is a substantial number of people - to make sure that they can also benefit from a higher minimum wage and raise it to $19. We all know how inflation is hitting people, especially the rise in cost of housing - and Girmay's done a great job trying to address housing as well in his role on the King County Council. But this is a great step forward for the King County Council to not just sit by and say the minimum wage is a city issue or it's a state issue. No, they have a quarter million people they can help right now. And to step forward and propose this, I think, is the right thing to do. I hope that all candidates for King County Council embrace it. I hope that the current councilmembers embrace it and pass it as quickly as they can, because I think this is an important step for folks living in those communities. [00:30:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And they shouldn't be left out of the progress that many of the people who've been able to live in cities have been benefiting from. And sometimes we think unincorporated King County and people just think - Oh, it's just a few people living out in the boonies. You talked about how many people there are, and these are places like Vashon Island, Skyway, White Center - where there are a lot of people - these are our neighbors. They just happen to be in an area that wasn't formally incorporated. And so I see this as definite progress. We have a ways to go to get wages to a place where they're really funding people's lives today. Rents are so high. The cost of living has increased so much. Rents, childcare, these massive costs that are so huge and that are preventing people from being able to fully participate in society, to be upwardly mobile, to live the life that they choose. We know we can do better. We know we owe this to the residents. And I think this starts for businesses that employ more than 500 people. This is [not] burdening small businesses. It just seems like this is really the logical thing to do. Medium-sized businesses with 16 to 499 employees would be given a four-year transition period, but it's really important to get this on the way. This is a very popular policy also, fortunately. And so I am optimistic that this will pass and hope it has the unanimous support of the council. [00:32:25] Robert Cruickshank: I hope so too. It should be unanimous. I'd like to see Dow Constantine come in strongly for it as well and help use his power and influence to get it done. It should be an issue in the council races - between Teresa Mosqueda and Sofia Aragon, for example. I think it's a really important contrast that can be drawn. [00:32:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I wanna close out talking about a couple of stories revolving around the Seattle Police Department. The first is a story that broke - I think it was KUOW reported on it - but there have been rumors dogging Seattle Police Chief Diaz about an alleged affair or rumored affair. However, lots of people are really wondering whether to question this because it also may be rumors intended - falsely made up - intended to de-credit the chief and speed his way out. And people are trying to weigh which one of these this is. What happened here and what do you see going on? [00:33:26] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, this is a sadly typical situation that we've seen in SPD over the years - where different elements of the command staff start sniping at each other and trying to take each other down, rather than focus on their jobs. It's unclear and we don't know - and I don't really care - what Chief Diaz is doing his personal time. Obviously, if it's an employee, then you gotta make sure all rules and ethics are respected - but if people are also throwing around insinuations, that hurts the woman in question. You don't wanna make a woman who's working in SPD subject to these rumors - not just that makes Chief Diaz look bad, the department look bad - you're sullying someone's reputation here. It shouldn't be sullied. But the bigger question here is - what does it say about SPD and what does it say about how it's being run? We're in the middle of a wave of burglaries that people are complaining about, and complaining about slow SPD response time, people complaining about safety on our roads. And I will say just yesterday near my home in Northgate, I saw a driver go right through a red arrow, turning into an intersection - it wasn't like it turned red right as they were entering, it had been red for some time when they entered - in front of a police car. And the officer did nothing - just let it happen and no enforcement at all. People complain about the number of homicides that are happening. It's a real crisis out there, and concerns about is SPD really doing all it can do to investigate these? Is it doing all it can do to close burglary cases? And yet what do we see SPD doing? Their command staff are sniping at each other and spreading gossip and rumor, whether there's any truth to it or not. And I think it's just a sign of how dysfunctional SPD has become. I think it's also a sign that we need strong leadership to reform this department. We'll talk about, I know, about the consent decree in a moment, but it's clear that there are ongoing management problems. And it raises the question - do we need a external chief to come in, who isn't part of all these rivalries and gossip and jealousies, to come in and put a stop to a lot of this? But it's just a sign - that these rumors are reaching the media - that SPD's commanders are not focused on the job they say they're focused on. They're happy to blame the City Council, which has no operational control over SPD, which hasn't said a word about defunding the police since they - for a hot minute in the summer of 2020, very gingerly cut a piece of SPD's budget, ever since then they've been showering as much money as they can on the police department - trying to ply them with recruitment bonuses and making it very clear - Oh no, we're not gonna defund you anymore. Sorry, forget about that. The City Council is not the problem here. There's a real problem with how SPD is managed. There's a problem with the command staff. And Council doesn't run that department - as you said earlier, the mayor does. And so we need to see how Bruce Harrell's going to respond to this too, because it's becoming increasingly clear that SPD isn't getting its job done. [00:36:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's not getting its job done in any way - people are suffering - and the most cynical thing is there've, no surprise, been SPOG communications in various places literally touting - Detectives haven't been able to respond to this commercial burglary for two weeks and it's 'cause we were defunded. As you said, defunding did not happen. In fact, their funding has increased. They keep giving money to these people despite staffing shortages in other departments too. If that would help, that would be one thing. But even police officers are on record saying - Yeah, these hiring bonuses are not gonna get more people in the door, keep people. Retention bonuses aren't gonna keep people. That's actually not the problem. The problem is not financial anymore. But it's really troubling just that everyone's eye seems to be off of the ball. And everyone's eye seems to be in a different place than where Seattle residents can see they need to be. As we talked about earlier with those poll results, Seattle residents want a more comprehensive response. They want responsiveness from the police department and they want to shift out responsibilities, assets to manage things in a way that does ensure they can get the service level they expect from the police department - and get other community violence interventions, diversion programs, other community safety initiatives up and running. And they just seem to be focused on literally everything but that. And at a time where everyone is facing this challenge of trying to manage, whether it's crime or behavioral health crises or everything that we're dealing with, they need to do better. We need Bruce Harrell to get this under control - what dysfunction and what disarray - he needs to get a hold of this. [00:38:01] Robert Cruickshank: He really does. Again, the mayor runs the police department. The mayor has operational control. It's not the City Council. And I think we need to see that leadership from the top to really fix what's gone wrong at SPD. [00:38:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now I wanna talk about big news that broke last night - that a judge just ended federal oversight of SPD after 11 years. Now you were in the administration that saw the consent decree established. What is the legacy of this consent decree, and where do we go now that federal oversight is largely ending? [00:38:34] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, the consent decree has its pros and cons. The upside is, and always was - and this is why many in the community demanded it and went to the DOJ in the first place in 2010 and 2011 - they felt they needed a federal judge, a federal monitor and the US Department of Justice to come in and force SPD to improve its use of force policies, to address concerns about biased policing, and ultimately also added in were - later in the process - concerns about how it manages demonstrations. So it's a pro - is that you get an outside body that is widely trusted, certainly when Obama ran the DOJ and now that Biden does, to come in and force the changes that SPD wasn't willing to make and the City wasn't able to make. The downside though is it's a federal legal process that is fairly limited in what it can cover. You're at the mercy of the federal judge, the federal monitor - who wound up stepping in the summer of 2020 to undermine some of the efforts that were taken to reform the department, including cutting SPD's funding. So its coming to an end doesn't mean that SPD has been fixed. What it means is that in the eyes of this judge, the specific conditions laid out in the 2013 consent decree, in his mind, have been achieved. And what does that mean for people here in Seattle? It doesn't necessarily mean that SPD is a clean bill of health and is now operating in a much better place than it had been before. And in fact, the federal judge did retain jurisdiction over use of force and of how discipline is managed. He cares a lot about the contract - having raised significant concerns about the previous SPOG contract that was done in 2018. But it goes back to something that I remember Mike McGinn saying a lot in 2012, 2013 during this whole negotiation process around the consent decree - pointing out correctly that lasting reform isn't gonna come from the federal government, it's gonna come from the community, and it's going to depend on the ability of City Hall to make change in SPD and make it stick. And he took a lot of heat for saying that. People thought he was trying to keep the DOJ out - he wasn't. He welcomed the DOJ, he was always honest about that, direct about that. But I think he was right. He was right then and right now that with the federal government largely stepping back - not completely, but largely stepping back - bringing an end to much of the consent decree, it's now up to us. It's up to us as a city, as a community, and especially our elected officials in City Hall to actually make sure that what we want done at SPD, what we want done with public safety more broadly happens. As we talked earlier in this podcast, there's a lot of support out there in the public for non-armed response to crime. People want it, it polls off the charts. We still haven't seen it. The mayor's office keeps promising and promising, keeps getting delayed and delayed. This mayor has been in office a year and a half now, and it's time to see it come to fruition - that's going to be another important piece of how we handle policing and public safety in the City - is to have armed officers doing less of it or focusing on the things they need to focus on and not the things where they don't need to be focused on. But we'll see what happens there because as we've seen all along, this is really up to the community to make these reforms stick. The DOJ had its role and we can ask how effective was it really - again, the ending of the consent decree doesn't mean SPD's fixed, it just means certain boxes got checked. But I think we have to see what happens out of City Council elections this year and what the mayor's going to do to address ongoing problems with the police. [00:41:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. All with the backdrop of negotiations happening now for the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract - and that will set the tone for so much moving forward. It's going to be interesting to see how this proceeds. [00:42:16] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, it really will. And I think that SPOG contract is going to be crucial - and who gets elected to the City Council this fall will play a really big role in how that negotiation winds up. [00:42:26] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely will. And with that, we'll conclude this week-in-review. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 8th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful cohost today was Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long-time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter - and multiple platforms, I think - @cruickshank. We're all around. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter. You can find me on most platforms as @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Are your White Center home's windows looking dirty and dusty? Then you need to let the professionals at Seattle Window Cleaners (206-453-3936) give them a good wash for you! Go to https://www.westseattlewindowcleaner.com to find out more. Seattle Window Cleaners City: Seattle Address: 3400 Harbor Ave SW Website https://www.westseattlewindowcleaner.com/ Phone +1 206 453 3936 Email martin@seattlewindowcleaner.com

We are back after taking a week off to get a hold of thing on our end. Thank you everyone!In this week episode we share the story of a local woman who relocated to Seattle and became well known in her community of White Center, West Seattle. Her name is Leticia Martinez-Cosman, listen on how Brett Gitchel became the primary suspect to "Letty's" disappearance.S.B.S. of the weekKey Connections Realty(619) 495-1339https://keyconnectionsrealty.comhttps://www.instagram.com/KeyConnectionsRealEstate/https://www.facebook.com/karlysdrealtor/aboutFollow us on our social media outlets!!https://www.instagram.com/whereintheworld_iscrimeinsd/https://www.facebook.com/people/Where-In-the-World-is-Crime-in-San-Diego/100084037718436/

On this Primary Week re-air, Crystal chats with Teresa Mosqueda about her campaign for King County Council District 8 - why she decided to run, the experience and lessons she'll bring to the County from serving on Seattle City Council, and her thoughts on addressing progressive revenue options, public service wage equity and morale, housing and homelessness, public safety, transit rider experience, climate change, and budget transparency. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Teresa Mosqueda at @TeresaCMosqueda.   Teresa Mosqueda As a Progressive Labor Democrat, Teresa Mosqueda is committed to creating healthy and safe communities, investing in working families through job training, childcare and transit access, and developing more affordable housing for all residents. She brings a proven track record of successfully passing progressive policies and building broad and inclusive coalitions. Teresa was named one of Seattle's Most Influential People 2018 for acting with urgency upon getting elected, received the Ady Barkan Progressive Champion Award from Local Progress in 2019; and earned national attention by leading the passage of JumpStart progressive revenue to invest in housing, economic resilience, green new deal investments, and equitable development. Prior to elected office Teresa worked on community health policies from SeaMar to the Children's Alliance, and championed workers' rights at the WA State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, where she helped lead state's minimum wage increase, paid sick leave, farmworker protections, workplace safety standards, and launched the Path to Power candidate training with the AFL-CIO.   Resources Campaign Website - Teresa Mosqueda   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. I am very excited today to have joining us - current Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who is a candidate for King County Council District 8, which covers Seattle - including West Seattle, South Park, Georgetown, Chinatown International District, and First Hill - as well as Burien, part of Tukwila, and unincorporated King County - in White Center and Vashon Island. Welcome to the program - welcome back. [00:01:22] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much for having me back - I appreciate it. [00:01:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I guess the first question is - what made you decide to run for King County Council after being on the Seattle City Council? [00:01:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really, really honored to be able to serve the full City of Seattle - 775,000 residents at this point - to be able to pass progressive policies like progressive revenue through JumpStart, Green New Deal and affordable housing that it was funding, to be able to quadruple the investments in affordable housing, to expand worker protections. But the truth is, we know that much of the population that I was elected by - the folks that I really center in my public policy - also work and have family outside of the City of Seattle. And in many ways, I want to build on what I've been able to accomplish in Seattle - investments in affordable housing, investments in new career pathways, good union jobs, to expand on the childcare and working family supports that I've centered in my work on City Council. But in order to reach the broader population of working families who are just outside of Seattle's borders but may work in Seattle and come in and out of the City - I want to create greater equity and stability across our region - the County is the place to do it. And in terms of stability, the County is the only place that has purview over public health, has the purse strings for behavioral health investments. And so if I want to complement efforts to try to house folks and create long-term housing stability, especially for our most vulnerable community members, the County is the place to do that - through investments in behavioral health, by sitting on the Public Health Board, by being directly involved in the budget that has purview over public health and behavioral health investments. I see it as an extension of my work at the City to create housed and healthy communities. And it actually goes full circle back to my roots where I started my career in community health. It is exciting opportunity, and I see it as a growth and expansion of the work that we've done in Seattle. [00:03:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talk about progressive revenue - the JumpStart Tax, which is a really, really important source of revenue that has been so helpful for businesses in the City, for residents, so many people in need - and has been a benefit to the City, especially in this time of a budget downturn in that the JumpStart Tax helped to bail out a budget shortfall there. So this revenue seemed to come just in time. You had to fight for it. You led the fight for it. What lessons do you take out of that fight to the County, and what progressive revenue options are there at the county level that you would be willing to pursue? [00:04:05] Teresa Mosqueda: I think one major lesson is how I've approached building these big progressive policies that have not only earned the majority of votes, but the vast majority - if not unanimous vote sometimes - that have withstood the test of time, have not been overturned, and have not been overturned by legislative councilmatic action nor by the courts. I will take with me to King County the ability to build these broad coalitions. And think about JumpStart - who was there when we launched it? It was ironworkers and hardhats, along with business entrepreneurs from both small and large business, with community and housing advocates standing collectively together to say - We will not only stand by this progressive revenue, we will stand by it knowing that it's five times the amount of the previous policy and it's twice as long. That's a huge effort that took place to try to get people on the same page, and we had to - with growing income inequality, growing needs, an increase in our population. There was no other option. This had to succeed, and so I will take that same approach to King County Council. So much is on the needs list right now in the "wake" of the global pandemic. We have the ongoing shadow pandemic. We have increased needs for mental health and community health investments. We have increased needs for food security and housing stability. There is not an alternative. We must invest more and we must do it in a way that withstands the test of time, like I've done on Seattle City Council. So for me, it's the how I bring people together that I will bring to King County Council. And I think it's also the what - not being afraid to push the envelope on what's possible. Many people said it was impossible to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights - and we got sued, and we won. People said it was impossible to legislate having hotel workers get access to guaranteed healthcare at the gold level, protections from retaliation, maximum workload. We not only passed that in legislation, but we withstood that in the court. And the same is true of JumpStart. We withstood multiple litigation attempts to try to take away JumpStart, and it's withstood the test of time. And I'm excited to see what else we can do in a city that sees so much growth but incredible inequity across our region - to bring people together to address these pressing needs. [00:06:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talked about housing and homelessness, and one thing called out by experts as a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover their cost of living. Do you believe our local service providers, a lot of whom are nonprofits, have a responsibility to pay living wages for the area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level? [00:06:54] Teresa Mosqueda: Yeah, two things I would say. One is - absolutely, we need to make sure that folks who are working on the frontline as human service providers - think folks who are the counselors to youth, or people who have mental health or substance abuse needs that we need to help address so that they can get stably housed, think about services to our vets and seniors. These are workers on the frontline who rely on relationships and have skills, expertise in the human service category. They need to have investments in these deeply needed services. And in order for us to create greater stability, we need to be paying them living wages. I say "we" - because this is not about the nonprofits needing to pay them more. It is about we, the public entities, needing to increase our contracts to these organizations who then employ people to be on the frontline. For better or worse, we have a human services system that has largely relied on contracting out critical services that are arguably public services. They are supported by public dollars, and we, public officials, have a responsibility to pay those organizations enough so that they can invest in the wages for frontline workers. That is what I have tried to do at Seattle City Council. The first year that I came in at Seattle City Council, the Human Services Coalition came to me and said - We have not had a cost of living increase in 10 years. To not have a COLA in 10 years for most workers in our region and across the country is unheard of, but it's especially unheard of for the very folks on the frontline trying to address the most pressing crisis in our country right now - and that is housing instability and homeless services. So we worked in 2019, and we passed the Human Services cost of living adjustment - that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what needs to be addressed. The historic and chronic underfunding of these positions still needs to be addressed. We are not going to be able to close this gap of 40, 50, 60% turnover in our critical organizational partners, organizations, if we don't address the wage stability issue. So I think actually going to the County and bringing that experience of having worked directly with the human service providers and hearing their stories about why it was so critical not only to have a cost of living adjustment, but to get at this chronic underfunding is going to be really coming at a pivotal moment. Seattle does have a cost of living adjustment. I want to bring that cost of living adjustment to King County and collectively with Seattle, I want to work to address the underpayment for human service providers as well. [00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: There's been a lot of action when it comes to addressing housing and homelessness from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to new legislation, and potentially even more legislation coming out through the end of this legislative session. We're currently recording this in mid-April, so it may come out a little bit further when there's a definitive answer for everything that happens. But amid a lot of this work that is currently being implemented or has just been authorized, there's a lot in process but still seemingly a lot more that needs to be done. What would your top priorities be to make a noticeable and meaningful difference in both homelessness and housing affordability if you're elected to this position? [00:10:11] Teresa Mosqueda: Resources for housing is critically needed across King County. Resources will help local jurisdictions be able to implement the new requirements that are going to be coming forth from our State Legislature, which - I want to thank our State legislative members - every year they go to Olympia and every year we ask them to be bold - be bold on housing solutions, recognizing that housing is the solution to being houseless. Housing helps people who have multiple compounding factors get healthy, get stable, and be productive members of our community. Housing is the solution to this biggest crisis that we see, not only in Seattle and King County, up and down the West Coast, but across our entire country. We have not built enough housing to house our current population plus the population who will continue to come to our region. So one of the things that I think I can take to the County is the desire to make sure that local jurisdictions, whether it's Burien or Tukwila, or unincorporated areas like in Vashon and Maury Island or in White Center - that they have resources as well to help build the type of housing that's being requested from the State Legislature - to do so in accordance with their Comprehensive Plan so that people can implement it in the time frame that works for those local jurisdictions, but to help them take away the barrier of not having enough resources. Seattle is unique in that we have pushed forward different resources. We have different types of tax revenues - thanks to JumpStart, for example - but in areas that don't have those type of resources, I hope the County can continue to be a good partner, in addition to the state, to build the type of diverse housing that we're now going to be required to build and hopefully we can do even more. The State Legislature is actually creating a new floor. We should be building upon that, and where we can go higher and denser - that is good for the local environment, it is good for the local economy, it's good for the health of workers and small businesses. And it's what I've heard from Vashon Island to Tukwila - people have said, "We don't have enough workforce housing." Small business owners have said, "I don't have enough workers in this area because they can't afford to live here." So I want to hopefully break down misperceptions about what type of housing we're talking about. We're talking about housing for seniors and vets, kiddos, youth, workers. We're talking about supporting the creation of that housing with additional revenue - that's one of the things I'd like to bring to the County. And to also recognize that when we have diverse economies that are prosperous, it's because workers can live next to their place of employment. Workers can walk to their childcare. We don't have time to spend two hours in the car commuting back and forth - that's not good for our health, our family's health, and it sure isn't good for the health of our planet. So it's a win-win-win, and I think that's something that I can really bring in as a County Councilmember - the knowledge that these local jurisdictions want to do more, but sometimes are limited with their resources. And wherever I can, I want to help step up and provide that support. [00:13:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Public safety has also been an area where the County continues to make a lot of news, has a lot of responsibility - they operate a jail, and that has itself made a lot of news. Over the past couple years throughout the pandemic, some of the employees of the jails - the guards - other people, the Public Defenders Association have called out overcrowding conditions, unsafe conditions in the jail. There's been times where the jail has not had clean water, several illness outbreaks, people not being treated correctly. It seems to be a really bad situation. Recently, the King County Council just voted to extend a contract to rent additional beds from a SCORE facility in Des Moines. This, during a backdrop of events where the King County Executive has made a promise to close the King County Jail, but it seems like we're getting further away from that, or at least not getting closer to that. Would you have voted to extend the SCORE contract? And should we close the jail? What is your vision for the short term? [00:14:17] Teresa Mosqueda: I think that the move to close down a jail that's both outdated and unsafe is not only good for the inmates, it's good for the folks who are working there. I think this is another example of where there's a false perception of sides. People who work within the jail, as well as those who are incarcerated, have expressed their not only horror when seeing mold and deterioration of the building, but it is extremely unsafe as well - as you mentioned - due to overcrowding. There's a few things that I think we can do. Number one, we should address upstream - who was being sent to these facilities in the first place. In a presentation that the Seattle City Council received from the City Attorney's Office, there was a large number of people who were initially booked and jailed, and ultimately were released because there was no grounds to put forward charges. And I think we need to stop the habit or the practice of putting folks in that situation to begin with. Even if they are not incarcerated for long periods of time, the fact that people are being jailed - especially youth - creates consequences down the road, mental health consequences, consequences for your housing, for your livelihood, your employment. And the negative impact of just being booked in the first place - both for the physical health of somebody, but also the trajectory of their life - is quantifiable. It is known, and we should stop that practice early. I agree with the effort to move folks into a situation that is healthier, but I also want to continue to look at how we can reduce the chance that someone is ever incarcerated in the first place, invest more in restorative justice practices. I'm optimistic by some of the conversations I've heard from folks in the community, specifically in Burien, about the ways in which some of the initial conversations have taken place with the Burien City Police Chief Ted Boe, and some of the commitments that have been made to try to look at restorative justice differently. And I think that holistically we need to look at what leads someone to be in that situation in the first place and back up to see what additional community investments we can be making so that people can have greater access to economic security, community safety, and reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with the carceral system to begin with. [00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, or for people who are considering this voting decision and who are looking around and who are feeling unsafe, and who are not quite sure what the right direction is to move forward, or what can be done but feel like something should be done - what is your message to them? And what can make us all safer? [00:17:01] Teresa Mosqueda: There's a few things that I think have really come to light, especially during the pandemic. We tell people to stay home to stay healthy. Well, if people don't have a home, they can't stay healthy. If we can think about the increased situation where many of us have probably seen loved ones in our lives - whether it's family members or friends - who have turned to substances to cope, to self-medicate with the stress, the trauma, the isolation that has only increased during the pandemic. I hope there's greater empathy across our community and across our country for why people may be self-medicating to begin with. And I think if we think about these recent examples of where we have seen people become more unstable in their housing situation or turn to substances because of increasing stress and pressure, that hopefully there's greater empathy for why it is so critical that we invest upstream. It is not an either/or - it's creating greater balance with how we invest in community safety, in what we know equals the social determinants of health. When we invest in housing, it helps reduce the chance that someone is going to engage in criminal activities later in life. When we invest in early learning, in job opportunities, in youth interactive programs, when we invest in even gun reduction and youth violence reduction strategies, it helps create healthier individuals and healthier populations, reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with an officer to begin with. These are public safety investments, and they shouldn't be seen as a separate silo from "traditional safety." It actually saves lives, and there's a huge return on investment when we make some of these upstream program policies a priority. I think it actually creates healthier communities, and for those who are looking at it through the economic lens, healthier economies - knowing that that return on investment has been proven time and time again. And it's good for individuals and community health as well. [00:19:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, there's a shortage of workers across the board - certainly King County is included in this shortage of county workers in several areas, including in many front-line positions that impact public safety - maintenance, care, health - all of those that are crucial to delivering services and help that the residents of the County need. We've seen hiring, retention, and referral bonuses for public safety employees. Do you think we should be considering those for other employees? [00:19:39] Teresa Mosqueda: Absolutely. This is part of the conversation that I raised while at Seattle City Council. There is, I think, a detrimental impact to workplace morale across public servants when we're not uniformly treating people the same. It's not what I feel, it's not that that's my perception - that's actually coming from workers within the City of Seattle who completed a survey that our Human Resources Department, in addition to Seattle Police Department and other Seattle agencies, completed to ask, "What would you like to see? How would you feel if certain employees got a hiring bonus or retention bonus?" And overwhelmingly, workers in public service said that they thought that this would hurt morale - if existing public servants weren't treated the same. I mentioned that in the Human Services category, there's a 40% to 60% turnover rate for our nonprofit organizations who are helping folks on the frontline. There's a huge turnover rate, as well, within our Human Services Department - we've had to freeze the hiring, and reduce hours, and reduce positions. Public libraries, community centers are front-facing programs for the community during COVID and we are slowly starting to scale those back up, but they're nowhere at capacity right now. And what workers themselves have said within the City of Seattle is - they want to see greater strategies for retention. Investments in childcare keeps coming up. Investments in more affordable housing keeps coming up. And if you want to look specifically at the Seattle Police Department, the officers themselves said that they did not think that hiring bonuses was the way to address retention and morale issues - that played out in their comments in the press, as well as the survey results that we saw. I think that there's a more equitable approach that we should be taking. I think that we should be looking at how we recruit and train and incentivize people to come to public service overall, whether that means you're coming in to work as a firefighter or a police officer, or whether that means that we want to recruit you to be serving the public in libraries or as a lifeguard - which we don't have enough of - or as a childcare provider, which we don't have enough of. We should be looking across the board at these public service programs and figuring out ways to both address retention and morale, and to do so equitably. And to listen to what workers have said - they want housing, they want childcare, they want regular and routine transit. And they want us to, especially within the City of Seattle, address disparity in wages for folks of color and women compared to their counterparts. Those are some things that I think we should be taking on more seriously. [00:22:17] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. Now, you talk about people saying they want regular and routine transit. Lots of people want that. Lots of people - more importantly - need that, are relying on that. And there's been lots of talk about the rider experience around safety on transit, but also about the availability and accessibility of service and all-day service - not just some of those commuter-centric commute-time service bumps that we've seen. What would your approach to Metro be as a councilmember? [00:22:50] Teresa Mosqueda: So I appreciate that you raise safety because it is an issue that comes up for riders as well as the drivers. Members of ATU, who drive buses around King County, have expressed increased concern around their safety. Whether they're driving in the day or night - given COVID has increased interpersonal violence across our country, they are on the receiving end of that as well. So I'm excited to talk with ATU, with members who have been out on the frontline as our bus drivers, as well as riders to talk about how we can improve safety for everyone. That is - again, on the preventative side, trying to figure out ways that structurally and through public policy we can ensure that riders and drivers are safe. There's also two things that drivers have talked to me about and folks within King County Metro. They say there's a lot of focus on new routes and how do we expand routes - routes, routes, routes - which I also agree with. But they've also brought up that we need to continue to invest in the people, maintenance, and operation to make sure that there's enough people to be working on existing routes and new routes to come. Similar to housing, we don't want to just build units. We want to make sure that for those who need personnel in those units to make sure that folks stay stably housed, we're investing in the workforce to ensure that that housing, that that unit is successful. We need to be looking at investments in the workforce, recruiting folks to come to these good living wage union jobs, and to be thinking about how we improve retention and stability as well. And for as far as maintenance is concerned - thinking more about how we can invest in greener fleets, greener maintenance opportunities, and ensure that those vehicles are running well and routinely. So those are two of the things that have come directly from the frontline drivers themselves. And then more broadly - workers. You mentioned all-day services. I would also argue all-night services to the degree that we can add additional stops, because many of the childcare providers who are coming in early in the morning, construction workers who are coming in early in the morning, janitors who might be going out late at night, talk about how they have to rely on vehicles because there are not times that the buses are showing up to get them to work and back home in time. So I think that it's multi-prong. But again, I think the common ground here is that the workers in this sector are agreeing with the recipients of the service. And collectively, I'm hoping that we can address safety, workforce needs, and increase routes as well. [00:25:23] Crystal Fincher: Definitely, and I really appreciate you bringing up the workforce needs. I know a couple people who use transit regularly but ended up getting vehicles because of the unpredictable cancellations due to staff shortages, whether it's maintenance or drivers, just making it unreliable to get to work on time. And already the time taken to commute that way is a lot, so that would improve the experience greatly - definitely appreciate that. Transit is also very, very important to achieving our climate goals. And by most measures, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals - while we're experiencing devastating impacts from climate change, including extreme heat and cold, wildfires, floods. What are your highest-priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 climate goals? [00:26:17] Teresa Mosqueda: One thing might surprise folks in that category - probably not a huge surprise for folks who have heard me talk before - but I think if we can invest in additional housing, dense housing across our region, it will actually reduce CO2 emissions. And it's really common sense, right? We are the third-highest mega-commuter city or region in the nation. We have more people who are commuting back and forth to work than most of the country. And the reason is because they can't afford to find a house near their place of employment. If CO2 emissions from cars - single-occupancy cars - is the number-one contributor to pollution in our region, I believe that is at the top of our list for helping to reduce our carbon footprint across the country and across the globe. We should be increasing density. We should see it not only as a good economic stimulant, what's right to do for workers and working families, but it is one of the best things that we could also do for our climate. I think that there's - again, a misperception or a false divide between folks who are environmentalists and want to see more trees, and their perception that additional housing or density takes that away. It does not. We can both create setbacks for higher buildings and use the airspace to create living opportunities, while we plant additional trees and preserve old growth. I've gone to at least three ribbon-cutting ceremonies for Habitat for Humanity, who created - basically - townhouses connected altogether. We don't have a lot of row houses in Seattle, but row houses, if you will, around trees created in the shape of a U with old-growth trees in the middle - allowing for greater shade, and a play area for kiddos, and a place to sit for elders. It is very much possible to build dense housing options and preserve old growth while planting new trees. So I think in addition to creating density, we can plant more trees. We can do more to incentivize good living-wage jobs in industries that are cleaner. I heard from our friends in Georgetown Community Center that they had to beg and plead for one of the local industries to incorporate more greener options for a glass manufacturer down there. And we should simultaneously be seeing the opportunity to promote good jobs as a requirement for also promoting good green jobs. And I worked very hard with members of both the environmental community and the labor community in the past to push Just Transition policies - to ensure that as we transition to greener economies or greener manufacturing strategies, that we're preserving good living-wage jobs and, even better, preserving good union living-wage jobs. So I look forward to making sure that we have denser cities, that we have greener cities, and that we have greener industries. [00:29:13] Crystal Fincher: Now, King County does incremental budgeting, making it more challenging for people to understand how county funds are allocated in a base budget. The budget is known as one of your areas of strength. What do you think can be done to make the budget process easier for the public to understand and influence at the county level? [00:29:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really proud of what we've been able to accomplish in Seattle. And coming from working the halls of Olympia on behalf of the Washington State Labor Council for eight years and then for three years before that with the Children's Alliance, I was used to this concept of having these biennial budgets that needed to be seen in full, that you could see the red line to know what was the investment from last year versus the upcoming year. Unfortunately, the City of Seattle doesn't have such a budget document. It's basically like single pages - page after page of narrative descriptions of what the dollars will do. That's fine for some budget notes, but what I think we are working towards in the City of Seattle - a preview for folks who love budget talk - is we're going to one day have a true biennial budget and an actual budget document where you will be able to see the red line, either additions or subtractions to specific programs so that everyone knows what is being invested in, how funding is changing, and where priorities are showing up in the budget. I am excited about being able to build on that work that I've done in Seattle, especially as Budget Chair, in some of the most pressing economic times in recent history, starting in 2020. And have been able to not only allocate millions of dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act, but also to create greater transparency in how we budget. One of the things that I think is maybe misunderstood out there is the way in which we've helped to provide transparency in the entire budget, but specifically the Seattle Police Department. It had not been exposed year-over-year that Seattle Police Department actually had about $40 million that was rolling over year-over-year on top of funding that the chief, that the mayor, that the department had acknowledged they could not use. And in a time where we saw an economic crisis on the horizon, growing needs in our community, and knew that that was $40 million that was not going to be put to use, not going into direct services for the community - and for those who wanted to see additional officers, wasn't even going to be able to use to increase the hiring plan. It's good budgeting to be able to make sure that that funding is transparently accounted for in the General Fund - and where we can deploy it to things like food, housing, childcare, economic security for small businesses that we do so. That's something I'm really proud of - that we were able to show what the full picture was, not only for that department, but for all departments. And to make some important investments in mental health services, behavioral health services, youth violence, gun violence reduction strategies - things that similarly invest in community safety, but we were able to show where those line items move. I will bring to King County Council the ability to structurally push for greater transparency for members of the public, encourage us as the legislative branch to own the separate but equal branch of government that the council is as the legislative branch, and ensure that the public has an opportunity to dive into the proposal that comes from the executive, just like the proposal that comes from the governor to the State Legislature. You receive that, you dissect it, you talk to community about what it means - and then ultimately the legislative branch reconvenes, reconfigures the budget, and presents it to the executive for a signature. It's good governance, it's good transparency. I think it's understandable from folks across whatever political spectrum - it's important to have budget transparency and accountability, and that's what I've been able to accomplish in the City of Seattle. [00:33:02] Crystal Fincher: It is, and I think there are a number of people, especially listeners to Hacks & Wonks, who do enjoy budget conversations, who would definitely look forward to more budget transparency at the County level, like you've been working towards at the City level. As we close here and as people are going to be making the decision about who they're going to be voting for for this County Council position, what is your message to voters and people listening about why they should choose you? [00:33:30] Teresa Mosqueda: I'm very thrilled to be in this race for King County Council. I think I have not only proven that I'm an effective legislator at the council level, but that I know how to center folks who have been left out of policy conversations in the room, but more importantly - follow the lead of those who've experienced the injustices over the years. We have been able to move historic, monumental, national-headline-grabbing policies within the City of Seattle in my now going into six years in Seattle City Council. And it has been done, I believe, in a collaborative way, in a way that has made transformational change, and in a way that I think has always centered - been centered on my progressive commitments to investing in working families, folks of color, and the LGBTQ community, workers to ensure that there's greater opportunity and prosperity. And creating housing and stability - that is something that is good for our entire community. I do this work because it's all about how we create healthy communities. You have to have investments in good living wage jobs and housing stability and opportunity education to have self-determination and control over your own life and your own decisions. And I think through public policy, through investments with public resources, we can create greater opportunity across our county. I am excited, as well, to be coming to this race as a woman, as a Latina, as a Chicana - poised to be the first Latina ever elected to King County Council. And with a King County population that is made up of half people of color and a quarter immigrant and refugee, it is critical that we have more voices with folks who have the lived experience coming from communities of color serving in these positions. I think that's why I've been able to effectively and efficiently move policy through so quickly - because I have put at the front of the line many of the community members who are often left out of policy discussions. I hope to bring in my commitment to working with folks who are workers, women, folks of color, members of the LGBTQ community to hear more about what we can do at King County Council. I know I have big shoes to step into with Councilmember McDermott and his commitment to public health, working with the LGBTQ community, his tenure in the State Legislature - and I'm also excited to add to that and serve our broader region and our growing needs. [00:35:59] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Councilmember Mosqueda, for spending this time with us today and having this conversation. Sincerely appreciate it, and we'll certainly be following your campaign eagerly over the next several months. Thank you. [00:36:13] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much - I appreciate it. [00:36:15] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Zack, Kimnang and Pat, the elders (soon to be card-carrying AARP members) of the IWC team, went into the studio to have a very real and sometimes raw conversation about their lives in White Center. 

The Monologue: ATM machine ripped from White Center gas station  The Interview: State Sen. Mark Schoessler (R-Ritzville) on the rise in gas prices thanks to the carbon fees. The Monologue: WSP pursuing DUI suspects during emphasis patrol The Interview: Kristina Mitchell (Snohomish County council candidate) explains why she's more aligned with the values of the district than Megan Dunn. LongForm: Tracy Tribbett with Pacific Justice Institute explains the legal argument in the Olympus Spa case.Quick Hit: Lynnwood sex offender given credit for time served in NetherlandsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our guest is Kevin Hoang, senior at Evergreen High School who is Evergreen's A.S.B. President for the 2022-23 school year! Kevin is fun, good natured, creative and light hearted but is also equal parts, serious, intelligent  and determined as you will find in his conversation with Christian Tautua and Frank Johnson! Kevin loves EHS and White Center and has worked tirelessly this year  to make the life he shares with his community, his schoolmates and his family better!  We can't wait for you to meet him in this episode. He is a delight.  Our hope is that Kevin will come back on the podcast in the coming years to let us know where he is and how he is changing the world because trust: he will change the world.   We are late to publishing so some of the dates they speak of are passed, many apologies!  Beyond that, enjoy.   Post Production: Zack Hamilton *Recorded at Lake Burien Presbyterian Church

On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Teresa Mosqueda about her campaign for King County Council District 8 - why she decided to run, the experience and lessons she'll bring to the County from serving on Seattle City Council, and her thoughts on addressing progressive revenue options, public service wage equity and morale, housing and homelessness, public safety, transit rider experience, climate change, and budget transparency. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Teresa Mosqueda at @TeresaCMosqueda.   Teresa Mosqueda As a Progressive Labor Democrat, Teresa Mosqueda is committed to creating healthy and safe communities, investing in working families through job training, childcare and transit access, and developing more affordable housing for all residents. She brings a proven track record of successfully passing progressive policies and building broad and inclusive coalitions. Teresa was named one of Seattle's Most Influential People 2018 for acting with urgency upon getting elected, received the Ady Barkan Progressive Champion Award from Local Progress in 2019; and earned national attention by leading the passage of JumpStart progressive revenue to invest in housing, economic resilience, green new deal investments, and equitable development. Prior to elected office Teresa worked on community health policies from SeaMar to the Children's Alliance, and championed workers' rights at the WA State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, where she helped lead state's minimum wage increase, paid sick leave, farmworker protections, workplace safety standards, and launched the Path to Power candidate training with the AFL-CIO.   Resources Campaign Website - Teresa Mosqueda   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. I am very excited today to have joining us - current Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who is a candidate for King County Council District 8, which covers Seattle - including West Seattle, South Park, Georgetown, Chinatown International District, and First Hill - as well as Burien, part of Tukwila, and unincorporated King County - in White Center and Vashon Island. Welcome to the program - welcome back. [00:01:22] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much for having me back - I appreciate it. [00:01:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I guess the first question is - what made you decide to run for King County Council after being on the Seattle City Council? [00:01:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really, really honored to be able to serve the full City of Seattle - 775,000 residents at this point - to be able to pass progressive policies like progressive revenue through JumpStart, Green New Deal and affordable housing that it was funding, to be able to quadruple the investments in affordable housing, to expand worker protections. But the truth is, we know that much of the population that I was elected by - the folks that I really center in my public policy - also work and have family outside of the City of Seattle. And in many ways, I want to build on what I've been able to accomplish in Seattle - investments in affordable housing, investments in new career pathways, good union jobs, to expand on the childcare and working family supports that I've centered in my work on City Council. But in order to reach the broader population of working families who are just outside of Seattle's borders but may work in Seattle and come in and out of the City - I want to create greater equity and stability across our region - the County is the place to do it. And in terms of stability, the County is the only place that has purview over public health, has the purse strings for behavioral health investments. And so if I want to complement efforts to try to house folks and create long-term housing stability, especially for our most vulnerable community members, the County is the place to do that - through investments in behavioral health, by sitting on the Public Health Board, by being directly involved in the budget that has purview over public health and behavioral health investments. I see it as an extension of my work at the City to create housed and healthy communities. And it actually goes full circle back to my roots where I started my career in community health. It is exciting opportunity, and I see it as a growth and expansion of the work that we've done in Seattle. [00:03:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talk about progressive revenue - the JumpStart Tax, which is a really, really important source of revenue that has been so helpful for businesses in the City, for residents, so many people in need - and has been a benefit to the City, especially in this time of a budget downturn in that the JumpStart Tax helped to bail out a budget shortfall there. So this revenue seemed to come just in time. You had to fight for it. You led the fight for it. What lessons do you take out of that fight to the County, and what progressive revenue options are there at the county level that you would be willing to pursue? [00:04:05] Teresa Mosqueda: I think one major lesson is how I've approached building these big progressive policies that have not only earned the majority of votes, but the vast majority - if not unanimous vote sometimes - that have withstood the test of time, have not been overturned, and have not been overturned by legislative councilmatic action nor by the courts. I will take with me to King County the ability to build these broad coalitions. And think about JumpStart - who was there when we launched it? It was ironworkers and hardhats, along with business entrepreneurs from both small and large business, with community and housing advocates standing collectively together to say - We will not only stand by this progressive revenue, we will stand by it knowing that it's five times the amount of the previous policy and it's twice as long. That's a huge effort that took place to try to get people on the same page, and we had to - with growing income inequality, growing needs, an increase in our population. There was no other option. This had to succeed, and so I will take that same approach to King County Council. So much is on the needs list right now in the "wake" of the global pandemic. We have the ongoing shadow pandemic. We have increased needs for mental health and community health investments. We have increased needs for food security and housing stability. There is not an alternative. We must invest more and we must do it in a way that withstands the test of time, like I've done on Seattle City Council. So for me, it's the how I bring people together that I will bring to King County Council. And I think it's also the what - not being afraid to push the envelope on what's possible. Many people said it was impossible to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights - and we got sued, and we won. People said it was impossible to legislate having hotel workers get access to guaranteed healthcare at the gold level, protections from retaliation, maximum workload. We not only passed that in legislation, but we withstood that in the court. And the same is true of JumpStart. We withstood multiple litigation attempts to try to take away JumpStart, and it's withstood the test of time. And I'm excited to see what else we can do in a city that sees so much growth but incredible inequity across our region - to bring people together to address these pressing needs. [00:06:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. You talked about housing and homelessness, and one thing called out by experts as a barrier to our homelessness response is that frontline worker wages don't cover their cost of living. Do you believe our local service providers, a lot of whom are nonprofits, have a responsibility to pay living wages for the area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level? [00:06:54] Teresa Mosqueda: Yeah, two things I would say. One is - absolutely, we need to make sure that folks who are working on the frontline as human service providers - think folks who are the counselors to youth, or people who have mental health or substance abuse needs that we need to help address so that they can get stably housed, think about services to our vets and seniors. These are workers on the frontline who rely on relationships and have skills, expertise in the human service category. They need to have investments in these deeply needed services. And in order for us to create greater stability, we need to be paying them living wages. I say "we" - because this is not about the nonprofits needing to pay them more. It is about we, the public entities, needing to increase our contracts to these organizations who then employ people to be on the frontline. For better or worse, we have a human services system that has largely relied on contracting out critical services that are arguably public services. They are supported by public dollars, and we, public officials, have a responsibility to pay those organizations enough so that they can invest in the wages for frontline workers. That is what I have tried to do at Seattle City Council. The first year that I came in at Seattle City Council, the Human Services Coalition came to me and said - We have not had a cost of living increase in 10 years. To not have a COLA in 10 years for most workers in our region and across the country is unheard of, but it's especially unheard of for the very folks on the frontline trying to address the most pressing crisis in our country right now - and that is housing instability and homeless services. So we worked in 2019, and we passed the Human Services cost of living adjustment - that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what needs to be addressed. The historic and chronic underfunding of these positions still needs to be addressed. We are not going to be able to close this gap of 40, 50, 60% turnover in our critical organizational partners, organizations, if we don't address the wage stability issue. So I think actually going to the County and bringing that experience of having worked directly with the human service providers and hearing their stories about why it was so critical not only to have a cost of living adjustment, but to get at this chronic underfunding is going to be really coming at a pivotal moment. Seattle does have a cost of living adjustment. I want to bring that cost of living adjustment to King County and collectively with Seattle, I want to work to address the underpayment for human service providers as well. [00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: There's been a lot of action when it comes to addressing housing and homelessness from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to new legislation, and potentially even more legislation coming out through the end of this legislative session. We're currently recording this in mid-April, so it may come out a little bit further when there's a definitive answer for everything that happens. But amid a lot of this work that is currently being implemented or has just been authorized, there's a lot in process but still seemingly a lot more that needs to be done. What would your top priorities be to make a noticeable and meaningful difference in both homelessness and housing affordability if you're elected to this position? [00:10:11] Teresa Mosqueda: Resources for housing is critically needed across King County. Resources will help local jurisdictions be able to implement the new requirements that are going to be coming forth from our State Legislature, which - I want to thank our State legislative members - every year they go to Olympia and every year we ask them to be bold - be bold on housing solutions, recognizing that housing is the solution to being houseless. Housing helps people who have multiple compounding factors get healthy, get stable, and be productive members of our community. Housing is the solution to this biggest crisis that we see, not only in Seattle and King County, up and down the West Coast, but across our entire country. We have not built enough housing to house our current population plus the population who will continue to come to our region. So one of the things that I think I can take to the County is the desire to make sure that local jurisdictions, whether it's Burien or Tukwila, or unincorporated areas like in Vashon and Maury Island or in White Center - that they have resources as well to help build the type of housing that's being requested from the State Legislature - to do so in accordance with their Comprehensive Plan so that people can implement it in the time frame that works for those local jurisdictions, but to help them take away the barrier of not having enough resources. Seattle is unique in that we have pushed forward different resources. We have different types of tax revenues - thanks to JumpStart, for example - but in areas that don't have those type of resources, I hope the County can continue to be a good partner, in addition to the state, to build the type of diverse housing that we're now going to be required to build and hopefully we can do even more. The State Legislature is actually creating a new floor. We should be building upon that, and where we can go higher and denser - that is good for the local environment, it is good for the local economy, it's good for the health of workers and small businesses. And it's what I've heard from Vashon Island to Tukwila - people have said, "We don't have enough workforce housing." Small business owners have said, "I don't have enough workers in this area because they can't afford to live here." So I want to hopefully break down misperceptions about what type of housing we're talking about. We're talking about housing for seniors and vets, kiddos, youth, workers. We're talking about supporting the creation of that housing with additional revenue - that's one of the things I'd like to bring to the County. And to also recognize that when we have diverse economies that are prosperous, it's because workers can live next to their place of employment. Workers can walk to their childcare. We don't have time to spend two hours in the car commuting back and forth - that's not good for our health, our family's health, and it sure isn't good for the health of our planet. So it's a win-win-win, and I think that's something that I can really bring in as a County Councilmember - the knowledge that these local jurisdictions want to do more, but sometimes are limited with their resources. And wherever I can, I want to help step up and provide that support. [00:13:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Public safety has also been an area where the County continues to make a lot of news, has a lot of responsibility - they operate a jail, and that has itself made a lot of news. Over the past couple years throughout the pandemic, some of the employees of the jails - the guards - other people, the Public Defenders Association have called out overcrowding conditions, unsafe conditions in the jail. There's been times where the jail has not had clean water, several illness outbreaks, people not being treated correctly. It seems to be a really bad situation. Recently, the King County Council just voted to extend a contract to rent additional beds from a SCORE facility in Des Moines. This, during a backdrop of events where the King County Executive has made a promise to close the King County Jail, but it seems like we're getting further away from that, or at least not getting closer to that. Would you have voted to extend the SCORE contract? And should we close the jail? What is your vision for the short term? [00:14:17] Teresa Mosqueda: I think that the move to close down a jail that's both outdated and unsafe is not only good for the inmates, it's good for the folks who are working there. I think this is another example of where there's a false perception of sides. People who work within the jail, as well as those who are incarcerated, have expressed their not only horror when seeing mold and deterioration of the building, but it is extremely unsafe as well - as you mentioned - due to overcrowding. There's a few things that I think we can do. Number one, we should address upstream - who was being sent to these facilities in the first place. In a presentation that the Seattle City Council received from the City Attorney's Office, there was a large number of people who were initially booked and jailed, and ultimately were released because there was no grounds to put forward charges. And I think we need to stop the habit or the practice of putting folks in that situation to begin with. Even if they are not incarcerated for long periods of time, the fact that people are being jailed - especially youth - creates consequences down the road, mental health consequences, consequences for your housing, for your livelihood, your employment. And the negative impact of just being booked in the first place - both for the physical health of somebody, but also the trajectory of their life - is quantifiable. It is known, and we should stop that practice early. I agree with the effort to move folks into a situation that is healthier, but I also want to continue to look at how we can reduce the chance that someone is ever incarcerated in the first place, invest more in restorative justice practices. I'm optimistic by some of the conversations I've heard from folks in the community, specifically in Burien, about the ways in which some of the initial conversations have taken place with the Burien City Police Chief Ted Boe, and some of the commitments that have been made to try to look at restorative justice differently. And I think that holistically we need to look at what leads someone to be in that situation in the first place and back up to see what additional community investments we can be making so that people can have greater access to economic security, community safety, and reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with the carceral system to begin with. [00:16:40] Crystal Fincher: What do you think, or for people who are considering this voting decision and who are looking around and who are feeling unsafe, and who are not quite sure what the right direction is to move forward, or what can be done but feel like something should be done - what is your message to them? And what can make us all safer? [00:17:01] Teresa Mosqueda: There's a few things that I think have really come to light, especially during the pandemic. We tell people to stay home to stay healthy. Well, if people don't have a home, they can't stay healthy. If we can think about the increased situation where many of us have probably seen loved ones in our lives - whether it's family members or friends - who have turned to substances to cope, to self-medicate with the stress, the trauma, the isolation that has only increased during the pandemic. I hope there's greater empathy across our community and across our country for why people may be self-medicating to begin with. And I think if we think about these recent examples of where we have seen people become more unstable in their housing situation or turn to substances because of increasing stress and pressure, that hopefully there's greater empathy for why it is so critical that we invest upstream. It is not an either/or - it's creating greater balance with how we invest in community safety, in what we know equals the social determinants of health. When we invest in housing, it helps reduce the chance that someone is going to engage in criminal activities later in life. When we invest in early learning, in job opportunities, in youth interactive programs, when we invest in even gun reduction and youth violence reduction strategies, it helps create healthier individuals and healthier populations, reduce the chance that someone ever interacts with an officer to begin with. These are public safety investments, and they shouldn't be seen as a separate silo from "traditional safety." It actually saves lives, and there's a huge return on investment when we make some of these upstream program policies a priority. I think it actually creates healthier communities, and for those who are looking at it through the economic lens, healthier economies - knowing that that return on investment has been proven time and time again. And it's good for individuals and community health as well. [00:19:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, there's a shortage of workers across the board - certainly King County is included in this shortage of county workers in several areas, including in many front-line positions that impact public safety - maintenance, care, health - all of those that are crucial to delivering services and help that the residents of the County need. We've seen hiring, retention, and referral bonuses for public safety employees. Do you think we should be considering those for other employees? [00:19:39] Teresa Mosqueda: Absolutely. This is part of the conversation that I raised while at Seattle City Council. There is, I think, a detrimental impact to workplace morale across public servants when we're not uniformly treating people the same. It's not what I feel, it's not that that's my perception - that's actually coming from workers within the City of Seattle who completed a survey that our Human Resources Department, in addition to Seattle Police Department and other Seattle agencies, completed to ask, "What would you like to see? How would you feel if certain employees got a hiring bonus or retention bonus?" And overwhelmingly, workers in public service said that they thought that this would hurt morale - if existing public servants weren't treated the same. I mentioned that in the Human Services category, there's a 40% to 60% turnover rate for our nonprofit organizations who are helping folks on the frontline. There's a huge turnover rate, as well, within our Human Services Department - we've had to freeze the hiring, and reduce hours, and reduce positions. Public libraries, community centers are front-facing programs for the community during COVID and we are slowly starting to scale those back up, but they're nowhere at capacity right now. And what workers themselves have said within the City of Seattle is - they want to see greater strategies for retention. Investments in childcare keeps coming up. Investments in more affordable housing keeps coming up. And if you want to look specifically at the Seattle Police Department, the officers themselves said that they did not think that hiring bonuses was the way to address retention and morale issues - that played out in their comments in the press, as well as the survey results that we saw. I think that there's a more equitable approach that we should be taking. I think that we should be looking at how we recruit and train and incentivize people to come to public service overall, whether that means you're coming in to work as a firefighter or a police officer, or whether that means that we want to recruit you to be serving the public in libraries or as a lifeguard - which we don't have enough of - or as a childcare provider, which we don't have enough of. We should be looking across the board at these public service programs and figuring out ways to both address retention and morale, and to do so equitably. And to listen to what workers have said - they want housing, they want childcare, they want regular and routine transit. And they want us to, especially within the City of Seattle, address disparity in wages for folks of color and women compared to their counterparts. Those are some things that I think we should be taking on more seriously. [00:22:17] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. Now, you talk about people saying they want regular and routine transit. Lots of people want that. Lots of people - more importantly - need that, are relying on that. And there's been lots of talk about the rider experience around safety on transit, but also about the availability and accessibility of service and all-day service - not just some of those commuter-centric commute-time service bumps that we've seen. What would your approach to Metro be as a councilmember? [00:22:50] Teresa Mosqueda: So I appreciate that you raise safety because it is an issue that comes up for riders as well as the drivers. Members of ATU, who drive buses around King County, have expressed increased concern around their safety. Whether they're driving in the day or night - given COVID has increased interpersonal violence across our country, they are on the receiving end of that as well. So I'm excited to talk with ATU, with members who have been out on the frontline as our bus drivers, as well as riders to talk about how we can improve safety for everyone. That is - again, on the preventative side, trying to figure out ways that structurally and through public policy we can ensure that riders and drivers are safe. There's also two things that drivers have talked to me about and folks within King County Metro. They say there's a lot of focus on new routes and how do we expand routes - routes, routes, routes - which I also agree with. But they've also brought up that we need to continue to invest in the people, maintenance, and operation to make sure that there's enough people to be working on existing routes and new routes to come. Similar to housing, we don't want to just build units. We want to make sure that for those who need personnel in those units to make sure that folks stay stably housed, we're investing in the workforce to ensure that that housing, that that unit is successful. We need to be looking at investments in the workforce, recruiting folks to come to these good living wage union jobs, and to be thinking about how we improve retention and stability as well. And for as far as maintenance is concerned - thinking more about how we can invest in greener fleets, greener maintenance opportunities, and ensure that those vehicles are running well and routinely. So those are two of the things that have come directly from the frontline drivers themselves. And then more broadly - workers. You mentioned all-day services. I would also argue all-night services to the degree that we can add additional stops, because many of the childcare providers who are coming in early in the morning, construction workers who are coming in early in the morning, janitors who might be going out late at night, talk about how they have to rely on vehicles because there are not times that the buses are showing up to get them to work and back home in time. So I think that it's multi-prong. But again, I think the common ground here is that the workers in this sector are agreeing with the recipients of the service. And collectively, I'm hoping that we can address safety, workforce needs, and increase routes as well. [00:25:23] Crystal Fincher: Definitely, and I really appreciate you bringing up the workforce needs. I know a couple people who use transit regularly but ended up getting vehicles because of the unpredictable cancellations due to staff shortages, whether it's maintenance or drivers, just making it unreliable to get to work on time. And already the time taken to commute that way is a lot, so that would improve the experience greatly - definitely appreciate that. Transit is also very, very important to achieving our climate goals. And by most measures, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals - while we're experiencing devastating impacts from climate change, including extreme heat and cold, wildfires, floods. What are your highest-priority plans to get us on track to meet our 2030 climate goals? [00:26:17] Teresa Mosqueda: One thing might surprise folks in that category - probably not a huge surprise for folks who have heard me talk before - but I think if we can invest in additional housing, dense housing across our region, it will actually reduce CO2 emissions. And it's really common sense, right? We are the third-highest mega-commuter city or region in the nation. We have more people who are commuting back and forth to work than most of the country. And the reason is because they can't afford to find a house near their place of employment. If CO2 emissions from cars - single-occupancy cars - is the number-one contributor to pollution in our region, I believe that is at the top of our list for helping to reduce our carbon footprint across the country and across the globe. We should be increasing density. We should see it not only as a good economic stimulant, what's right to do for workers and working families, but it is one of the best things that we could also do for our climate. I think that there's - again, a misperception or a false divide between folks who are environmentalists and want to see more trees, and their perception that additional housing or density takes that away. It does not. We can both create setbacks for higher buildings and use the airspace to create living opportunities, while we plant additional trees and preserve old growth. I've gone to at least three ribbon-cutting ceremonies for Habitat for Humanity, who created - basically - townhouses connected altogether. We don't have a lot of row houses in Seattle, but row houses, if you will, around trees created in the shape of a U with old-growth trees in the middle - allowing for greater shade, and a play area for kiddos, and a place to sit for elders. It is very much possible to build dense housing options and preserve old growth while planting new trees. So I think in addition to creating density, we can plant more trees. We can do more to incentivize good living-wage jobs in industries that are cleaner. I heard from our friends in Georgetown Community Center that they had to beg and plead for one of the local industries to incorporate more greener options for a glass manufacturer down there. And we should simultaneously be seeing the opportunity to promote good jobs as a requirement for also promoting good green jobs. And I worked very hard with members of both the environmental community and the labor community in the past to push Just Transition policies - to ensure that as we transition to greener economies or greener manufacturing strategies, that we're preserving good living-wage jobs and, even better, preserving good union living-wage jobs. So I look forward to making sure that we have denser cities, that we have greener cities, and that we have greener industries. [00:29:13] Crystal Fincher: Now, King County does incremental budgeting, making it more challenging for people to understand how county funds are allocated in a base budget. The budget is known as one of your areas of strength. What do you think can be done to make the budget process easier for the public to understand and influence at the county level? [00:29:35] Teresa Mosqueda: I've been really proud of what we've been able to accomplish in Seattle. And coming from working the halls of Olympia on behalf of the Washington State Labor Council for eight years and then for three years before that with the Children's Alliance, I was used to this concept of having these biennial budgets that needed to be seen in full, that you could see the red line to know what was the investment from last year versus the upcoming year. Unfortunately, the City of Seattle doesn't have such a budget document. It's basically like single pages - page after page of narrative descriptions of what the dollars will do. That's fine for some budget notes, but what I think we are working towards in the City of Seattle - a preview for folks who love budget talk - is we're going to one day have a true biennial budget and an actual budget document where you will be able to see the red line, either additions or subtractions to specific programs so that everyone knows what is being invested in, how funding is changing, and where priorities are showing up in the budget. I am excited about being able to build on that work that I've done in Seattle, especially as Budget Chair, in some of the most pressing economic times in recent history, starting in 2020. And have been able to not only allocate millions of dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act, but also to create greater transparency in how we budget. One of the things that I think is maybe misunderstood out there is the way in which we've helped to provide transparency in the entire budget, but specifically the Seattle Police Department. It had not been exposed year-over-year that Seattle Police Department actually had about $40 million that was rolling over year-over-year on top of funding that the chief, that the mayor, that the department had acknowledged they could not use. And in a time where we saw an economic crisis on the horizon, growing needs in our community, and knew that that was $40 million that was not going to be put to use, not going into direct services for the community - and for those who wanted to see additional officers, wasn't even going to be able to use to increase the hiring plan. It's good budgeting to be able to make sure that that funding is transparently accounted for in the General Fund - and where we can deploy it to things like food, housing, childcare, economic security for small businesses that we do so. That's something I'm really proud of - that we were able to show what the full picture was, not only for that department, but for all departments. And to make some important investments in mental health services, behavioral health services, youth violence, gun violence reduction strategies - things that similarly invest in community safety, but we were able to show where those line items move. I will bring to King County Council the ability to structurally push for greater transparency for members of the public, encourage us as the legislative branch to own the separate but equal branch of government that the council is as the legislative branch, and ensure that the public has an opportunity to dive into the proposal that comes from the executive, just like the proposal that comes from the governor to the State Legislature. You receive that, you dissect it, you talk to community about what it means - and then ultimately the legislative branch reconvenes, reconfigures the budget, and presents it to the executive for a signature. It's good governance, it's good transparency. I think it's understandable from folks across whatever political spectrum - it's important to have budget transparency and accountability, and that's what I've been able to accomplish in the City of Seattle. [00:33:02] Crystal Fincher: It is, and I think there are a number of people, especially listeners to Hacks & Wonks, who do enjoy budget conversations, who would definitely look forward to more budget transparency at the County level, like you've been working towards at the City level. As we close here and as people are going to be making the decision about who they're going to be voting for for this County Council position, what is your message to voters and people listening about why they should choose you? [00:33:30] Teresa Mosqueda: I'm very thrilled to be in this race for King County Council. I think I have not only proven that I'm an effective legislator at the council level, but that I know how to center folks who have been left out of policy conversations in the room, but more importantly - follow the lead of those who've experienced the injustices over the years. We have been able to move historic, monumental, national-headline-grabbing policies within the City of Seattle in my now going into six years in Seattle City Council. And it has been done, I believe, in a collaborative way, in a way that has made transformational change, and in a way that I think has always centered - been centered on my progressive commitments to investing in working families, folks of color, and the LGBTQ community, workers to ensure that there's greater opportunity and prosperity. And creating housing and stability - that is something that is good for our entire community. I do this work because it's all about how we create healthy communities. You have to have investments in good living wage jobs and housing stability and opportunity education to have self-determination and control over your own life and your own decisions. And I think through public policy, through investments with public resources, we can create greater opportunity across our county. I am excited, as well, to be coming to this race as a woman, as a Latina, as a Chicana - poised to be the first Latina ever elected to King County Council. And with a King County population that is made up of half people of color and a quarter immigrant and refugee, it is critical that we have more voices with folks who have the lived experience coming from communities of color serving in these positions. I think that's why I've been able to effectively and efficiently move policy through so quickly - because I have put at the front of the line many of the community members who are often left out of policy discussions. I hope to bring in my commitment to working with folks who are workers, women, folks of color, members of the LGBTQ community to hear more about what we can do at King County Council. I know I have big shoes to step into with Councilmember McDermott and his commitment to public health, working with the LGBTQ community, his tenure in the State Legislature - and I'm also excited to add to that and serve our broader region and our growing needs. [00:35:59] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Councilmember Mosqueda, for spending this time with us today and having this conversation. Sincerely appreciate it, and we'll certainly be following your campaign eagerly over the next several months. Thank you. [00:36:13] Teresa Mosqueda: Thank you so much - I appreciate it. [00:36:15] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Today is Halloween, but tomorrow marks the start of the two-day holiday of Día de los Muertos.A Latinx-owned art gallery in White Center has been celebrating all month by displaying work from 40 artists inspired by the holiday.Nepantla Cultural Arts Gallery co-founders Jake Prendez and Judy Avitia-Gonzalez are here to talk about Día de los Muertos' significance, and how the holiday has grown in Seattle.We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: http://bit.ly/seattlenowAnd we want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram at SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedback

Amazon  We all make choices in our lives. Sometimes, the freedom to pick between many different options can feel more like bondage than freedom. Sometimes, our freedom of choice is a prison. Literally, yet, God can take any choice we make and turn it into His glory and victory. Author Sylvia Ramos-Paneque's CHOICES: A Bail Bondswoman's Reflections is the harrowing, autobiographical account of the many life choices she made that led her to serve jail time in a Mexican prison for smuggling drugs in the early 1980s. Within this compelling memoir, Ramos-Paneque guides readers through her early days of growing up in "Rat City," a.k.a. White Center, a suburb of Seattle, through adulthood, and her growing faith journey along the way. Readers learn about the tough choices made in the author's life, from becoming a ninth-grade school drop-out to getting married at the age of sixteen and ultimately drifting into her role as a drug smuggler, running cocaine from South America. This riveting story showcases how God was with the author through all of her choices, and, in His powerful economy, everything can be used. After years of making "wrong" decisions, God's choice to provide the author with employment as a bail bondswoman for over the following twenty years turned her choices into God's decision to help countless others in similar situations. With God's help, our darkest and most painful experiences become His greatest assets in helping others.

Pt. 2 - picks up where we left off in Pt. 1, IWC Hosts Lisa Nguyễn and Christian Tautua in a sit down with community leader, mentor, colleague and friend, Aaron Garcia for this episode to share childhood stories and hear his reflections about growing up in White Center, leaving the community to go to college and then coming back to build a life in the neighborhood he loves.  Aaron's community work is stellar and he really is just getting started!  He is young, smart and passionate, driven by a vision and belief that our community's children, teenagers and youth, young people and their families should have access to all of the resources, relationships and opportunities they need to thrive.   This conversation was so rich and packed with good stuff that we decided to break it into two parts.     *Recorded at YES! office in Burien Post production: Zack Hamilton      

Lisa Nguyễn and Christian Tautua sit down with community leader, mentor, colleague and friend, Aaron Garcia for this episode of IWC to share childhood stories and hear his reflections about growing up in White Center, leaving the community to go to college and then coming back to build a life in the neighborhood he loves.  Aaron's community work is stellar and he really is just getting started!  He is young, smart and passionate, driven by a vision and belief that our community's children, teenagers and youth, young people and their families should have access to all of the resources, relationships and opportunities they need to thrive. **Editor's Note: Since recording, the proposal to the Highline School Board for the construction and rebuild of 3 Highline schools, one of which is Evergreen High School, was presented and passed and has moved forward for vote in the November ballot. This conversation was so rich and packed with good stuff that we decided to break it into two parts.  Enjoy Part 1 today and look for Part 2 to drop soon!   *Recorded at YES! office in Burien Post production: Zack Hamilton

What's Trending: WA-03 has a tightly contested race, racism in White Center, and Russell Wilson gets boo'd at Climate Pledge Arena. Big Local: DSW is closing in Tukwila, and a Tacoma man retrieves his own stolen trailer.  Andrew Warren is gaslighting.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Henok and Rasheed tell us about their experience with community advocacy and support as youth in the White Center area frequenting the Boys and Girls Club and Log Cabin, to adults leading programs through Southwest Youth and Family Services. Tune in to hear more about their event next week, GO Time, supported by White Center's Highly Hated clothing brand.

What's Trending: Troops killed Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahri in Kabul over the weekend, Starbucks conspiracy, some are calling for a national emergency against Monkeypox, and streaming sports is most likely becoming more common. Big Local: Heat equity in White Center, and a business shuttle could come to Sumner. Fact check Paul Krugman. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Seattle heavy metal band Skelator is playing at the Southgate Roller Rink in White Center on August 19th, so I had the band on to chat about their upcoming new album, how they continued on during the pandemic, true heavy and much more. This episode features a brand new song by Skelator. Turn it up! 

LGBTQ Pride isn't limited to June on the Duwamish Peninsula! Hear firsthand stories behind the ever-expanding Alki Beach Pride celebration coming up Aug 13-14, and the triumphant return of White Center's Lumber Yard Bar after the original location was destroyed in a devastating fire. https://www.alkibeachpride.org/ https://www.thelumberyardbar.com/

From coffee shop owner to politician, Amber Bennett reveals her motivation behind making a decision to step up and try to make a difference in her community. I interview Amber about why she wants to run for a seat in her State Senate's office. Representing the 34th District of Washington State, Amber will potentially become the representative for West Seattle, Vashon Island, White Center, Harbor Island and a small part of Downtown Seattle. "Let's Bring Our Focus To CRITICAL THINKING" Amber wants to focus on families, the community and supporting small business owners. "This campaign is an uphill battle against the establishment. I've got a strong chance to win, but I have to reach as many people as I can. I serve you, the public, not the establishment.” To Donate or learn more about her campaign, visit BennettSenate2022.com

On the morning of March 8, 1961, a 13 year old boy living near Seattle, Washington, walked up the front steps of his house, opened the front door and went inside. He called out to see if anyone was home, but it was silent. He shrugged, then dropped his books and walked straight across the dining room and down a narrow hallway. When he reached the end of that hallway, where it led into the kitchen, the boy stopped. Frozen with fear, he just stared at what was in front of him…. (Today's story has a VERY unlikely ending, so be sure you stick around to the end to hear it.) For 100s more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallen If you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @MrBallen SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT: . . . . Main Sources: 1. The multiple murders of Mary Kelley Campbell: a true story, Stroschein & Campbell - Elk River Press - 2020 2. Reddit story summary -- https://www.reddit.com/r/mrballen/comments/u0cau1/the_murder_of_mary_sunshine/ 3. State versus Swenson -- https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/1963/36248-1.html 4. Newspapers from Ancestry -- Daily News (New York, New York) 05, January 1964, Sunday -- https://www.newspapers.com/image/459966253 5. Newspapers from Ancestry -- Longview Daily News (Longview, Washington) 13 March 1961 Monday page 13 -- https://www.newspapers.com/image/575662652/?terms=%22Mary%20campbell%22&match=2 6. Mormonism -- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Church-of-Jesus-Christ-of-Latter-day-Saints 7. Historical weather information -- https://www.wunderground.com/history 8. Maps and directions -- https://www.google.com/maps/place/11015+SE+240th+St,+Kent,+WA+98031/@47.3867082,-122.1980942,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x54905ea2707eae2d:0xa4a73b095db4cdcd!8m2!3d47.3867046!4d-122.1959002 9. Child safety seats -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_safety_seat 10. Washington state drivers license 1960 -- https://dannyslicenseplates.com/vintage-drivers-licenses/ 11. White Center, Seattle -- https://www.loghousemuseum.org/history/white-center/ 12. Burley Idaho -- https://www.cassiacounty.org/cassia-county-history 13. Hypnosis -- https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hypnosis/about/pac-20394405 14. Mind control -- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hypnosis-the-power-trance/201509/is-total-mind-control-possible

On today's Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Pierce County Council Chair, Derek Young. They reflect on the triumphs and tragedies of this legislative session including a transformative transportation package, the failure to pass the climate and missing middle housing bills, rollbacks in police accountability, and a victory for legislative workers. Then they dive into the mega-city proposed in south Pierce County and the challenges unincorporated areas face from missing out on the investments that cities make. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Derek Young, at @DerekMYoung. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Resources “WA Democrats agree on funding for $17B transportation package” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/wa-democrats-agree-on-funding-for-17b-transportation-package/    “Why Washington state's missing middle housing bill died” by Joshua McNichols from KOUW: https://www.kuow.org/stories/why-washington-state-s-missing-middle-housing-bill-died    “5 major things the Washington Legislature approved in 2022” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2022/03/5-major-things-washington-legislature-approved-2022    “These clarifications to police accountability legislation will go into effect immediately” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian:  https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article259078253.html    “Legislation Will Allow Police to Use Force to Stop People from Fleeing” by Paul Kiefer from Publicola: https://publicola.com/2022/03/08/legislation-will-allow-police-to-use-force-to-stop-people-from-fleeing/    “How pro-worker bills fared in Olympia” by David Groves from the Stand: https://www.thestand.org/2022/03/how-pro-worker-bills-fared-in-olympia/   “‘Mega City' proposed for south Pierce County” by Tony Overman from The News Tribune: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article258930478.html     “Pierce County talks of investing in ‘dumping ground.' Would forming a city there be better?” by Josephine Peterson from The News Tribune: https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article258752158.html#storylink=mainstage_card7    Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington State through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program today's co-host, Pierce County Council Chair, Derek Young. Welcome. [00:00:51] Derek Young: Thank you, Crystal. I've always, since I was a kid, wanted to be on almost-live and so I'm super thrilled to be here. [00:00:59] Crystal Fincher: Well, we are almost-live each Friday, and well today is the morning after the end of the legislative session which concluded late last night. So just starting off with recognizing what happened late yesterday - the flurry of activity - what is most notable to you about this legislative session overall? [00:01:20] Derek Young: So, I think two things. One, they've managed to pass what I consider a transformative transportation package - that's probably a play on words there that I didn't intend. And also, on the flip side, the failure to pass House Bill 1099, which was a bill basically telling local governments to deal with climate change in our comprehensive planning. There was obviously a lot of other good legislation that got passed, but those for me were the yin and the yang of the really, really great and the disappointments. [00:02:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so there in the transportation package, what made it so transformative? [00:02:12] Derek Young: For me, it's two things. One is that it focused more on maintenance and restoration which is important, rather than building lots of new highways. I know there are advocates that will say that it still builds too many highway miles, but compared to previous packages, this is more tightly focused. But the bigger thing to me, and this is a critical issue, is that it invests in local transit for the first time in decades. And that's a big deal for communities like mine that have really struggled to rebuild our local transit networks. And I just couldn't be happier because it just hasn't happened in a long time. Part of that was because of, frankly, years of work by Representative Fey - who I'm super proud because he's from South Sound, so well done Jake. But also Marko Liias, who was new to the role in the Senate. So, grateful for their hard work. [00:03:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly. And Marko Liias, now the Senate Transportation Committee Chair after Steve Hobbs, the previous chair, was appointed to be Secretary of State after Kim Wyman left to serve in the federal government. So, I think you're absolutely right. A huge increase in the amount of funding for everyone who gets around in ways in addition to or aside from cars. A big increase, the biggest investment in that that we've seen so far. And in highway projects, I think there is broad agreement and understanding that maintenance is absolutely necessary and we're behind the ball on that and are moving, making progress. There is some expansion, which in some ways is frustrating and just the urgency with which we need to move in the opposite direction is notable. But I'm hoping that with this understanding and concluding this expansion that we have in this package - moving forward, we focus much more on maintaining the road infrastructure that we have as opposed to expanding it. In there, you talked about local, transit investments. What kind of a difference will this make within local communities? [00:04:45] Derek Young: So, this'll make sense to people on South Sound, but just to put a real bus wheels to the ground kind of thing - this will mean our four main trunk routes, literally Routes 1, 2, 3, and 4, we're clever that way. We literally named our top routes 1, 2, 3, and 4. And those will all now go to 15-minute headways. For folks in King County, that may sound like not such a big deal, but for those of us down here, that is a huge deal. And why it matters is that frequency is king when it comes to whether or not people choose to use transit or not. And so our major routes will now be able to move to that standard. The rest of our routes will not, so let's not get too carried away in terms of what this means, but that's a big step compared to - right now, we have one single route and that's Route 1 that is on 15-minute headways. And so that's a huge deal. The other thing it does is invest in some capacity projects. So, for example, it puts $10 million towards our bus rapid transit project. We're slowly closing the remaining gap to finishing that and that'll be our first non-rail high-capacity transit route and that replaces Route 1 in Pierce County, most of Route 1. So, that will serve tens of thousands of people and it's also where we're planning lots and lots of high-density growth. So, this is going to be transit-oriented development for miles and miles in South Pierce County and I couldn't be happier. [00:06:46] Crystal Fincher: Well, and you bring up growth - there were certainly a number of bills introduced to help effectively manage growth within the state and within our cities. One of those, the middle housing bill was not successful - we've talked about that before in this program - to better allow cities to absorb density within existing built areas and to help reduce the amount of sprawl. Another bill that was not successful, that you mentioned, HB 1099 failing - is really foundational in how we plan our communities. What was HB 1099 and what kind of difference would it have made? [00:07:26] Derek Young: So the essence of the bill was basically that we add climate change as a required planning principle or planning element to our local comprehensive plans. For those that don't know about what comprehensive planning is about, this is all part of the Growth Management Act, and basically local governments have to plan for housing, transportation, infrastructure. And then from there, our schools plan from what they receive from those documents, same with fire departments, you name it. Everyone figures out how to build their local services based on that. So, adding climate change to one of those documents makes it not only a requirement that we reduce our carbon footprint as a region as growth develops, but it also says that it's now a challengeable requirement. Basically that a third party could say, "You're not meeting your climate change goals. You're not planning for enough housing. You're not planning for enough transit. You're not planning for correct transportation, infrastructure, whatever." And that would make it basically incumbent on local governments to plan for denser, higher quality, more sustainable development. I thought we were there, to be honest with you. It was one of those things where everyone's saying, "Yes, I support this." And somehow it still didn't pass in the end. [00:09:10] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it was a big challenge. And you talk about how important the Growth Management Act and the comprehensive planning process is. It really is the guide by which local communities build and grow, and provides the bounds within which people have to operate and setting those bounds is really important. And as decisions are made, to your point, if something falls outside of those bounds, it can be challenged and potentially stopped. It's the lens through which all of the local planning decisions are made. I think a lot of times people underestimate how foundational this is, and how much planning determines just about everything about how our communities grow and look and change - to how our just basic services are provided, water and sewer and all of that, how the road and transportation network develops, how schools and services are sited within communities. How your community looks is really shaped and dictated by this. So, we're all facing the challenges of climate change. The effects we're already feeling and cities are faced with the responsibility for mitigating extreme heat, extreme cold, dealing with wildfire smoke, pollution and the effects of that, everything that we're dealing with. And so, to have this as a consideration in planning makes complete sense since this is a factor that we have to contend with. We know these cities are growing, cities have to plan for that growth. We have revenue projections, people have to plan within those revenue projections. We have climate change and people have to plan in consideration and in response to climate change. And yeah, it did seem like we were here. It took a bit of a path coming out of the House. It did look like everyone was on board. Initially, when it came out, the word was it was weakened, led by Rep van de Wege to take out some of those references in climate change. Went over to the Senate, those were put back in. Gave people the feeling that there was a consensus and it could be done, went back to the House, indications were that it was going to pass. It seemed like there were the votes there to do it and it didn't. Very disappointing. And this is not something where you can kick the can down the road. What happens, I guess, what's the consequence of this happening this year, and for folks being like, "Well, it seems like we can get to this next year." Is that going to be helpful? [00:12:03] Derek Young: Yeah. And this is the part - I wonder if legislators understand the consequences of this, because the largest counties in Washington are due to have our comprehensive plan updates - basically due by the end of 2023. We are starting our planning process right now, or excuse me, 2024, but we're starting that process now because the updates are a big deal. It takes a lot of work. These documents are hundreds of pages. And if we don't have that requirement in place before next year, it's not going to happen. So, for the bulk of the population of Washington, it will be another eight years before we have to respond to those requirements. Now, some of us are going to try to do it on our own - we're going to try to do the right thing, but it's a lot easier if we're all doing it as a collective effort. And the example I'll give you is this - let's say you have a city that has decided to site tens of thousands of new jobs, but doesn't provide the housing for it. Well, all those people have to live somewhere, right? So they're going to move somewhere else. Well, that means they have to drive far out of their homes, back into the city, to get to their jobs. How many vehicle miles are we adding to our list? Transportation is our largest source of carbon emissions in Washington. How many hours does that take out of their lives, away from their communities, away from their families? And then on the other side of that as well is what are we doing to our local environment? The rubber on the road is literally our biggest source of pollution into Puget Sound. So, in terms of sustainability, there is nothing we could do more than to start planning with that climate model in mind. I just think there's nothing that we could do more for future generations than to begin to plan with climate change in mind as a guiding principle because the worst thing that happens - let's say Derek is nuts, climate change isn't real, we're not causing it from carbon emissions, whatever. The worst thing that happens is that we improve public health, make Puget Sound cleaner, and we all save a lot of time to spend more time with our families and improve our quality of life. Okay, so that's good planning, right? So, even if we aren't worried about saving the world, we can at least make our lives a little bit better. [00:15:06] Crystal Fincher: We certainly can. Big missed opportunity - to your point, especially with larger counties, the planning process has started. This involves every department, touches every element of local government, and is a thorough and comprehensive review from the bottom all the way to the top, which takes time and a lot of effort, a lot of employee time. This is not a short process where you're just editing an existing document and calling it a day, updating some dates. This is essentially a review and an evaluation of how every element of government operates and incorporating climate has an impact on how every element of government operates. And really being forced to contend with every decision that you make has an impact, positive or negative, on the climate. Having to take that into consideration and mitigate any negative consequences or avoid negative consequences is a big deal. Big missed opportunity. There are several other things that happened. We'll be talking about them in shows to come, certainly. Melissa Santos wrote probably the first of many just recaps of what happened following the session last night. Some of the big headlines from the session - our ban on selling large capacity magazines for firearms, a big step forward in terms of gun safety and regulation that a lot of organizations have been lobbying for, for years. Certainly as we are facing increasing gun violence and the need to address that, this is viewed as a step in the right direction. There are people who are enthusiastically opposing it and saying it violates their Second Amendment rights, but I am certainly a person who, while not opposing firearm ownership, overall thinks that these kinds of regulations just make sense. And even if it doesn't solve every single one of the issues possible in this, reducing the amount and opportunity for gun violence is certainly a positive thing in my estimation. There was a delay and a restructuring of Washington Cares, our long term care program. We've talked about that previously in the show, but they're looking at making some fixes to that, helping more people become eligible for that - some people who may have been left out. They said that they're exploring portability of the program for people who may leave the state, so certainly getting that in better condition. There are some public safety measures that were changed. There were police accountability laws that were revisited. And so, last year the legislature approved new limits on police uses of force. There was vociferous, enthusiastic objections by many in the public safety community. Some of that was viewed to be not exactly relevant, but some was considered to be necessary and made in good faith and they said that they took steps to help clarify that. So, one bill helped to clarify that police are still allowed to use physical force to help transport people to mental health treatment, if they're in a mental health crisis. Another one allowed police to use physical force against people who tried to flee when they were stopped for questioning. And, again, the necessity of those changes was certainly up for debate, but the legislature decided to move forward with those. One that did not change was a bill that would have impacted how police are allowed to engage in chases. And so that law was not changed. Lots of advocates were heavily in favor of that and feeling that it didn't just revise or fix things, that it actually moved things backwards and expanded the situations where police could engage in police chases and basically lowered the threshold to engage in those situations. Worker - staff collective bargaining bill passed. Started with - there was an original bill that died, another bill introduced that started with major issues, but changes were made to it that seemed to have addressed many of the changes that advocates felt were necessary and many wound up being in favor of that bill and considering that a success. Lots of stuff around there. Was there anything else in particular that you found notable this session? [00:20:06] Derek Young: Yeah, I think it was important to clarify the use of force issue. And I use the term clarify intentionally because it turns out that when the legislature passed the reforms, there actually was no definition of force. So, what the legislature and what most people on the street would consider force, they're thinking violence, right? They're thinking, "I'm in a struggle with this person. I'm using some physical kind of act." Our local prosecutors and city attorneys interpreted that as anything that is literally touching and even going so far as the threat of restraint, ordering someone to stop. That went too far because when you are beginning to try to understand a criminal scene, it is very rare that they have probable cause. Probable causes is basically, "I have evidence you've committed a crime." Usually you need a little time to sort something out. And I'm talking like I'm a law enforcement officer here, but that's the way things go. And so being able to detain someone and say, "Look, I need you to stay." And keep them from leaving the scene - that is an important thing. On the flip side, that doesn't mean that you should be using excessive force. And so, differentiating between those two, I think is really important. So, that to me was an important clarification. I get the impression that that's not - when the legislature passed the reforms that it did last year, I got the impression that that's not what they intended, and what we heard from them was, "We disagree, basically, on these interpretations." So it seemed to me that it was, "If this isn't your intention, please clarify it." And so they did. So, I thought that was critical. Speaking as a former legislative staffer, I just want to say congratulations to them for finally gaining their rights and honestly never giving up. Because it was - how difficult must it be to demand your bosses, while they're in session, give you your rights while you're at your busiest, right? So, I was incredibly impressed by that. It's actually important for our democracy that we not have people that are paid poverty wages and treated unfairly doing the hard work that guides legislation. So, this is one of those things that most people in the public will never notice, but it turns out treating employees fairly and treating your staff fairly are good things. And so out of the things you mentioned, that was the one that I think will fly by most people and I just wanted to point it out as something that was a good, good thing. And I was happy to see them claw it back. [00:23:46] Crystal Fincher: Very good thing. Very excited about it. We've talked about it on this program before. And to me, it was also an issue of, "Are Democrats living their values?" Lots of rhetoric about how important unions are to workers, how important workers' rights are. I sincerely believe that and it seems like if one does sincerely believe that, then they don't object to that when it comes to their own staff and their own circumstance. And saying, "Well, it's good for all those other workers, but not for mine." That's a really bad look. And it seemed like that was the message being conveyed when the legislation initially died, before it was brought back. And, absolutely, kudos to those workers for taking collective action. They had a sickout. The legislature absolutely relies on those staffers. They are the ones doing the work and keeping everything running and nothing would progress or proceed without the very hard work of the staff there who are dedicated, who are making less money than they would be in many other circumstances - many of whom do want to contribute to our community and our democracy and to be in a position where they want the opportunity to have their grievances fairly addressed, especially in the context of previous grievances not necessarily being fairly addressed. This was something that they felt was necessary to keep people safe and healthy and protected in their work environment, and it did seem to be absolutely necessary. So, congratulations to Rep Riccelli, who is certainly a leader in getting this through and resurrecting it after it died, working to make the positive changes, listening to feedback to amend the bill and get it in the right place. So, very gratified to see that collective bargaining rights will be extended to legislative staffers. As we move forward - just talking about it, it's so great to have you on. [00:26:01] Derek Young: Sorry. I was just going to call out one thing you mentioned just real quickly. It's not just the collective bargaining - that protection for the workers is so critical because how many times have we heard in the past where legislative employees have not been properly protected? That to me is one of the most critical aspects of this. Having basically a grievance process - that to me is super critical. So, it's overlooked as a part of this, everyone tends to think about salary and benefits, but having a process to protect those employees - that's huge. [00:26:36] Crystal Fincher: Very huge. And I mean, we see examples throughout the state and a herd of examples with legislative staffers, where without a clear and effective grievance process, that mistreatment was allowed to flourish. And that people who were found to have treated their employees poorly or created a poor, unhealthy or toxic work environment are not meaningfully punished, dealt with, and employees were not meaningfully protected throughout the process. Many ended up in situations where there was high staff turnover, where there was no remedy, and so it basically forced employees out. Just really negative situations that now, hopefully, there will be a meaningful process to rectify those situations, keep employees protected, and help people who are spending a ton of time and effort and energy there to just be protected in all of those ways, and to have the opportunity to have a voice in their own work environment and in their own situation. I did also want to talk about, and excited because you are the Pierce County Council Chair. And sometimes we are very King County focused here, but it is really important to understand what's happening throughout the state and in other counties. There's been lots of conversation in Pierce County and the Tacoma area, areas south, about how, especially unincorporated areas, are invested in. Looking at projections for growth, both jobs and population occurring in many of those unincorporated areas and conversations about, does it make sense to incorporate some of those areas into cities? How are investments going to be made to help prepare and absorb that growth? What is that situation currently in Pierce County? [00:28:42] Derek Young: So, glad you asked because I will just start it by saying, we want these neighborhoods and communities to incorporate. It's actually something that we would encourage. It's actually unusual to have such a large, urban, unincorporated area. And it's certainly not what is intended by the Growth Management Act under the state. The Growth Management Act wants growth to happen in cities and not necessarily in counties. But for those of your listeners that are in King County, they may not be aware that if the urban unincorporated part of Pierce County south of Tacoma were to incorporate, it would be the second largest city in the entire state. It is a huge number of people, a couple 100,000, and we've been planning for a significant amount of growth that continue to happen there. It's already denser in most places than the city of Bellevue. So, these are large areas. It also happened, I would say, rather haphazardly. There are historic decisions that were made, and this is the thing about local government and land use and transportation planning - the decisions you make today will echo for decades. And that's certainly the case in Pierce County. There were lots of mistakes where basically growth was just allowed to happen in a haphazard way. It looked, at one point, like we were going to pave our way to Mount Rainier, and that was not the best idea in the world. And if you look at how you lay out a transportation grid, get resources - water, sewer, so on, so forth - just not a great idea. But that's what happened and we have to deal with it now. So, there is a fair amount of frustration as a result and the thing is that counties are not greatly equipped to handle that. We actually have very different tax structures than cities. We're only allowed to do certain things compared to cities. Just this one example, and this has been a constant frustration of mine, the multifamily tax exemption that basically encourages quality apartment building, so on, so forth, to get more housing - counties are prohibited from using that whereas cities have it. So, your community can look exactly like any other city, except the fact that you are living in an unincorporated area means that you're not eligible for that. Same is true of utility tax. We can't do business licensing the same way. We can't even require garbage collection. I'm not kidding. We can't - [00:31:47] Crystal Fincher: I did not know that. [00:31:48] Derek Young: Yeah, it's a weird, weird state rule. So, the point being that most of these areas belong in cities and whether or not they incorporate on their own - in each smaller community, most of them identify separately. There's a push by Representative Morgan to try to think about maybe incorporating one larger city and we're open to all ideas. There's been a few different efforts and they've each failed. Many years ago, there was a push to incorporate lots of cities. And so in the mid '90s, University Place, the city of Lakewood, Edgewood - they all incorporated at the same time. And since then, there's been a pretty big hole. We haven't seen any communities incorporate. So, the other option is annexing to a city, and that's an even slower process because the existing city residents - they may not think the same way as the new residents. So, for example, in terms of city services, will it be a net benefit in terms of tax revenue or will it be a net drain on your existing revenue? So, that's something that they have to consider, but it's definitely something that we want to encourage, which sounds odd as the county - we want to be the local government. But counties are always going to be the regional government. If you look at King County, for example, nearly all the urban area is incorporated into a city. There are a couple pockets that are not. There are a couple areas that are on the fringe of the urban area, but for the most part, it's incorporated. And, by the way, City of Seattle - incorporate White Center, for God's sake. I mean, it's a little crazy that that hasn't happened yet. Or Burien. One of the two. Someone do it. [00:33:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, yeah. It certainly makes sense. And to your point, county governments are usually viewed as the regional layer and are not the ideal body to handle just those day-to-day, on-the-ground things like cities do. Which creates the conversation like we're having in Parkway, Spanaway and Frederickson. Certainly in King County, talking about areas like Skyway and White Center being neglected, really feeling underinvested in because the typical investments that are made by cities and in the overwhelming amount of places in the county that are handled by cities, it just makes those kinds of issues fall to the back burner, oftentimes. Or just on the scale that the county operates, dedicating resources to one pocket or to areas that are very small in comparison to the county, but very meaningful to the people who are living there, is a tension that continues to exist. So, I will definitely be following this carefully. In this package, it looks like there's $200,000 that Representative Morgan had dedicated to studying the feasibility of incorporating into a city for those areas. Whether or not the city solution is right, I do not know. Probably best for the people who are there to decide, and the feasibility study is probably going to be very helpful and useful for that, but there has to be a solution for how to manage these local areas that, to your point, are large areas, are dense and highly populated areas, are some of the most populated areas in the state, but are and have been historically underinvested. And now we're expecting them to absorb a lot of growth, which is not being absorbed into other incorporated areas and cities because we are enforcing that and we keep not moving forward on policies that would encourage that. But if this is not managed effectively, then again, we fall into the trap of making housing more expensive, of siting jobs further and further away from where people live, making traffic worse, putting a strain and demand on our utilities and resources. Building housing where it doesn't currently exist is a very expensive thing for cities and communities to do - not just having to extend city infrastructure out there to serve it, but also to then have to maintain that for it's lifetime - is incredibly expensive and costs that are typically not captured anywhere within development. We're very bad at capturing those costs and really reflecting the true cost of building outside of areas that are already populated and that have housing, and that's what we're looking at and we better manage that better than we have before. The state may have not taken big steps in making that possible, but hopefully local communities will use the initiative to do that. And with that, thank you so much for joining us today on March 11th - time is flying and now we're past the legislative session - March 11th, 2022. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler and assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, helped out by Emma Mudd. Our wonderful co-host today is Pierce County Council Chair, Derek Young. You can find Derek on Twitter and you should follow Derek on Twitter @DerekMYoung, D-E-R-E-K- M- Young. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcast - I listen on the Overcast app - just type Hacks, I may not listen to Hacks & Wonks, but other podcasts. Anyway, just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you next time.

In September of 2021, Senate Bill 8 passed in the state of Texas. With it, some of the most restrictive abortion regulations in the country were enacted into law, going against the constitutional rights established in the landmark Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade. Such a critical legal interpretation can prompt review of the perennial question: who should get to decide on major questions of public policy today — the federal government, or state courts and state constitutions? The Honorable Jeffrey S. Sutton responded to the question in his book, Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation. While it is the states' responsibility to uphold the federal constitution, interpretations vary from state to state; is there danger in the disparities? Judge Sutton argued that for all its variety, American Constitutional Law should account for both the roles of state and federal courts and constitutions together when it comes to assessing the right balance of power. Sutton reminded us that our nuanced and ever-evolving systems must be deeply considered by those who interpret the law, and they must resist the assumption that the Supreme Court holds all the answers to our most complex constitutional questions. After all, the answer to the evergreen question of “who decides” ultimately reveals who governs us. The Honorable Jeffrey S. Sutton serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Judge Sutton was a partner with the law firm of Jones Day and served as State Solicitor of the State of Ohio. He also served as a law clerk to the Honorable Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (Ret.), the Honorable Antonin Scalia, and the Honorable Thomas J. Meskill. In addition to Who Decides: States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation, he is the author of 51 Imperfect Solutions. Sen. Joe Nguyen was born in White Center, raised in Burien, and currently lives in West Seattle. His experiences growing up in an immigrant community, as the son of Vietnamese refugees and raised by a single mother, inform much of his service today. Sen. Nguyen is the vice-chair of the Senate Human Services, Reentry & Rehabilitation Committee, and a member of the Transportation Committee, the Rules Committee, and the Environment, Energy & Technology Committee. Buy the Book: Who Decides?: States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation (Hardcover) from Third Place Books Presented by Town Hall Seattle and Henry M. Jackson Foundation.

On this episode of the STP Podcast Trent sits down with Brandi Mosby and Jessica White to discuss some really cool programs and curriculums that they have created to help teens and young adults learn more about financial literacy, taxes, real estate, and more life skills! It's called the Center of Opportunity and they are doing some really amazing work! Thanks for being on ladies!

When government determines how to allocate budgets for a city or neighborhood, marginalized communities can become the least represented in these processes.  We sat down with Gloria Briggs Manager at King County overseeing what is called a Participatory Budget (PB) to understand how this unique budgeting model can put power back in the hands of the people.  Gloria shares her early story of White Center, how the Community Investment Budget Committee members (CIBC, designers of the PB process) were selected and her hopes on how this can impact WC.   CIBC members Marissa Jauregui, Emijah Smith, Carmen Smith, Sahle Habte, Kimnang Seng   Recorded at Roots   

Welcome back to Season 2, Episode 112 of the Asian Hustle Network Podcast! We are very excited to have Joe Nguyen on this week's show. We interview Asian entrepreneurs around the world to amplify their voices and empower Asians to pursue their dreams and goals. We believe that each person has a message and a unique story from their entrepreneurial journey that they can share with all of us. Check us out on Anchor, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, TuneIn, Spotify, and more. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a positive 5-star review. This is our opportunity to use the voices of the Asian community and share these incredible stories with the world. We release a new episode every Wednesday and Saturday, so stay tuned! Sen. Joe Nguyen was born in White Center, raised in Burien, and currently lives in West Seattle. His experiences growing up in an immigrant community as the son of Vietnamese refugees and being raised by a single mother inform much of his service today. Since being elected, Sen. Nguyen has used his time in office to advocate for those who have been historically underrepresented and to push for progressive legislation that provides services to those in need. He prioritizes criminal justice reform, environmental health, and progressive tax reform. Sen. Nguyen is the vice-chair of the Senate Human Services, Reentry & Rehabilitation Committee and a member of the Transportation Committee, the Rules Committee, and the Environment, Energy & Technology Committee. Sen. Nguyen grew up in White Center and lives in West Seattle with his wife Tallie, a former special education teacher in the Highline Public School District, and their three young children. This podcast episode is sponsored by Kia. In the past year, Kia America has experienced incredible momentum with a growing portfolio of innovative and award-winning vehicles. Moving forward, Kia is expanding to also usher in a new age of mobility for all. With the strength of a new logo, purpose and business model, Kia is transforming itself into a symbol of innovation and sustainability. Kia is focused on becoming a leader in mobility and is charging ahead with electrification across their lineup, including the all-electric 2022 EV6, with estimated range of 310 miles depending on trim level and state-of-the-art 800v “fast charge” capability. But one thing will never change - Kia will continue to provide customers with world-class quality, design and innovative technology at a great value. Inspiration is contagious. Just like Asian Hustle Network and its amazing network of entrepreneurs who have inspired many by committing to their purposes, Kia will do the same with vehicles inspired by world-class innovation. Kia, Movement that inspires. Visit bit.ly/3IfxBQT to learn more. To stay connected within the AHN community, please join our AHN directory: bit.ly/AHNDirectory --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianhustlenetwork/support

Growing up in the multiracial, working class neighborhood of White Center on Coast Salish land, Sili Savusa (Samoan) learned from a young age that her role in life was to take care of her people. Now, as Executive Director of White Center Community Development Association in Seattle, Washington, she works to create places where working class communities of color can live their dreams. In conversation with an islander from the Caribbean, Seedcast's Felipe Contreras, Sili explains how she held onto Samoan values against the “Big Mack truck of racism” and why humility is a strong element of good community development work. Guest Host and Lead Producer: Felipe Contreras. Story editor: Jenny Asarnow. Content warning: this episode contains strong language at 15:24, 19:48, 25:59, 26:24.Resource: White Center Community Development Association

We take a stroll through Lincoln Park with radio personality Dave Beck. Also a preview of Smokey Brights at West Seattle Brewing Company, the Punk Rock Flea Market in White Center, and much more! https://www.westsideseattle.com/robinson-papers/2021/09/07/subshop-9-closing-after-38-years https://www.king.org/show/dave-beck-2-2/ https://www.facebook.com/PRFMSeattle

In this episode, IWC host Lisa Nguyen sat down with music artists and producers, Glendal Tautua and Cham Ba, to talk family, friendship, Bonnie in Greenwood and music videos! Glendal and Cham are both sons of White Center. Their partnership was forged while growing up together and discovering a common passion for the art of story telling and making music.     Recorded at Roots

Young's Restaurant, a hood known White Center staple, has been a cornerstone of the White Center Community since 1982. Our neighbor Janice Young joins the Inside White Center Team to talk about cooking thru the pandemic, winning the Westsider of the year award, and how the restaurant was founded.    Recorded at Roots Church

We sat down for a conversation with a true White Center treasure! Darlene Sellers has been Program manager at Steve Cox Park for 20+ years and has seen a lot over her years of building and nurturing relationships in our community! We aren't exaggerating when we say that every kid in the White Center community has come into contact or will eventually come into contact with Darlene and the team at the Log Cabin! Her tireless devotion to White Center youth and their families is an asset to this community that is beyond measure.  We are grateful for her work in the community, her presence in the lives of White Center young people and her friendship with all those who come come into contact with her. Happy that you'll get to hear from her today!   Recorded at Roots Church

For over 40 years White Center has been home to many Cambodian refugees.  Over the last few decades we've seen Khmer families and businesses flourish and build roots here.  Within the last 15 years due to redevelopment in our community, we've seen the Khmer population diminishing yearly.  We talk to Thyda Ros and Stephanie Ung to learn more about their mission to re-establish the Khmer community here and their dream of creating Poom(Village) Khmer here in WC.  Happy Cambodian New Year All!   Visit their website https://www.kcskc.org   Recorded at Roots Church

We get to hear from Christian Tautua today!  Christian's family moved to White Center when he was a youngster.  He attended Cascade Middle School where he teaches 7th grade English today! In addition, he is head coach for the Evergreen HS Wrestling team and serves as Middle School Rep With the Highline Education Association.   Recorded at Roots Church

Listen to Ijeoma Oluo talk about the need to Defund the Seattle Police Department : HERE0:58 - Episode Introduction1:45 - Interview with Lorena Gonzalez29:00 - Series Credits____________________________________________________________Lorena Gonzalez   Born and raised in Washington's lower Yakima Valley to a Spanish-speaking migrant farmworker family, Councilmember González earned her first paycheck at the age of 8, alongside her parents and five siblings. She relied on scholarships and worked three jobs to attend community college and later Washington State University.She moved to Seattle in 2002 to attend Seattle University Law School, where she graduated with honors in 2005. Since moving to Seattle, Councilmember González has lived in Capitol Hill, First Hill, Ballard, South Park and White Center.   As one of two at-large (citywide) representatives and the first Latinx elected to serve the Seattle City Council, Councilmember currently lives in the West Seattle Junction neighborhood (District 1) with her husband and their dog, Hugo.  ____________________________________________________________Produced In Partnership With :Town Hall Seattle  (https://townhallseattle.org/)The South Seattle Emerald  (https://southseattleemerald.com/)_____________________________________________________________Executive Producer + Host  // Marcus Harrison GreenExecutive Producer + Host // Enrique CernaAdditional Production Support Provided By // Hans Anderson & JEFFSCOTTSHAWMusic Provided By // Draze "The Hood Ain't The Same" // http://www.thedrazeexperience.com/about-draze/

FCON is a RAGING hardcore punk band from the White Center area of Seattle! I connected to the band via Zoom to chat about the origin of their band name, some of their early influences, protests and the pandemic, punk rock and much more. Plus you can hear 6 of their songs! Check it out and turn it up.

*Please note that at the time of recording the Governor of Washington had not yet issued a “Shelter in place” order. As of the release of this podcast, all Washington residence are required by law to stay home. Please, for you own safety and that of others, stay in your homes and practice social distancing when you do have to leave your home for food or medical attention.*Jenny McGrath is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Somatic Psychotherapist, Core facilitator at the Allender Center, and specializes in using movement, mindfulness and narrative work to help people find their way back to their bodies.Jenny explored and did research in Northern Uganda on how movement and dance could be used therapeutically which lead to her to graduate studies at the Seattle school. She learned about how the body is impacted by trauma and how the body is our portal to healing trauma, healing communities and to heal our world.We have become disconnect from our bodies. Western thinking is that the body and mind are separate and are not connected. This thinking has been harmful to how we care for ourselves, body and mind.Jenny grew up in theology and teaching around the body being something to get passed. And as a woman, she had a lot of messaging both implicit and explicit of the dangers of her body. She worked hard avoid her body and to use it as a tool. Her experience lead her to the mission field: “If I'm going to have a body it should be useful for others.”After working in Northern Uganda for a couple of years her body told her no. She broke into shingles and her immune system shut down. She didn't know what was going to happen and if she would be able to return to Uganda. It was at a conference she heard Dan Allender speak on longevity in serving professions. She decided to go to graduate school in Seattle, thinking she'd learn how to care for her body for three years and then return back to Uganda. The more she deconstructed her story and her faith, why she was so drawn to the places she was drawn to, she came to realize that tending to and learning how to inhabit her body was going to be a life long journey and a life long work.Amari, her boxer dog, helps regulate her and her clients.Right now, all around the world people are practicing social distancing and staying at home: it's like getting a crash course in being with yourself. Not everyone gets the privilege to be with family members or a safe place to shelter. The current situation has made self-regulation so much more difficult as people are in tight quarters and anxiety and frustration are high. Not being able to express what you're feeling in your body, what you're feeling still comes out even when we're disconnected.How do we come back to our bodies? Societies that are to focused on productivity have existed as floating heads… but as we're stuck in these spaces where we're not used to working or being productive and it's an invitation back to our bodies and ourselves in pretty drastic ways.How do we listen to our bodies and interrupt what we are feeling? First Jenny encourages us to normalize feelings of anxiety that come up. One working definition of trauma she uses in her work is immobility, whether psychically or physically, immobility is a felt sense of trauma in our bodies. Listen to the impulses in your body, what does it want to do? Does it want to release adrenaline and cortisol by running or some other physical activity? When she is working with someone, their body is the wisest person in the room. Our bodies can move through anxiety and surprisingly quick to resolve the anxiety if we start to listen to our body's impulses. The more you try ignore and push away, the louder your body will get. Pay attention, what are you noticing? When you engage in active noticing of your body, it will naturally begin to release the building pressure.Danielle has been telling her kids honestly how she is; “Hey, I'm a little bit crabby right now and I was short with you, did I hurt your feelings?” It's about stopping in the moment and putting words to what is going on with her, and allowing for there to be engagement. It has lightened the atmosphere in her home; We can't always take the action we want to take, but having a conversation, putting words to feelings, can generate relief.Jenny says how important this is because as we are all trapped together in our homes, our bodies are always co-regulating with each other. Science has show that even if someone doesn't know there is another person in the room, their body does and begins to regulate their heart rate, breathing and even brain waves will start to sync up with each other. Even when your kids don't know you're feeling anxious by your words, their bodies are feeling what you're feeling in your body as you are anxious. Naming what's happening in your body helps them to become more conscious of what they are feeling in their bodies, and provides some relief.Maggie shared that through this experience of practicing social distancing she has come to realize her own limitations. People who have experience trauma tend to keep a high level of busyness so they don't have to feel in their bodies.  Keeping a schedule with her kids to help them feel more normal has made her realized that she can not do all the things at the same time. She then had to acknowledge this for her kids, “Hey I see how all three of you need help right now and I am only one person and I will get to each of you in turn.” Feeling the pressure has made her evaluate how busy she is and also how important it is to engage your own kids about how you're feeling so you can provide a space for them to talk about what they are experiencing in their body and mind.When providing language for how to engage what someone is experiencing in their bodies Jenny likes to start with sensations, temperatures or energies that might not have a firm label. Is there a place in your body that feels warm? Is there a place in your body that feels squeezing tight? Having a directness when engaging awareness can be helpful!Jenny offers classes and workshops for movement: Her “Embodied Story” workshop is about how we are embodied version of our story. She walks people through getting a felt sense of their story in a three hour workshop that includes psychosomatic education (how experiences are held in our bodies) as well as exercises that represent through movement a “walking through” their story timeline, emotions or events. Group discussion is an important piece to know that we're not alone in this work or in feeling disconnected from our bodies.She also offers a series of dance movement classes - creating a space for communal movement rituals that bring communities together.  One participant said, “It's so rare to dance in a way that my body is not being objectified!”Danielle drew the contrast between the videos of Italians singing out of their windows together and Spaniards playing bingo out there windows, but here in the Northwest everyone is so spaced out that there really isn't that kind of community to engage. Jenny has been dreaming and scheming ways to make this movement work more accessible online, including offering online yoga classes. Check her instagram to get updates. [@indwell_seattle]Jenny remarks that social media is actually being used socially now, actually bringing connections rather than how it has been used for posting travel picture and where people are eating out which actually makes people feel disconnected.Maggie shared her experience taking one of Jenny's Body workshops in which Jenny said, “move the way you body wants to move.” It was then that Maggie realized she doesn't really allow herself to even ask that of her body because she has made her body into a workhorse and demands productivity. What a freeing experience to invite us to our bodies, allowing our bodies to move as it feels.Danielle named that we are feeling powerless, isolated and alone right now with the coronavirus. This feelings are a reenactment of trauma! When we're in our house and you can not control the air you breathe when you leave, you're feeling out of control. You can't ignore other traumas that are affecting you from your past. And while we're in our homes we can't not engage! Jenny said it's like a magnified version of what our bodies try to get us to do normally—our bodies are trying to develop some sense of agency. “I can do this. I can get through this.” Will you allow your body to have a new experience? Sometimes we can just imagine ourselves getting to imagine breathing clean air and moving, and our body-mind connection that the body can start to feel a little more free if we can allow ourself space to dream.Jenny works in somatic experiencing where she has clients think through or imagine times when they are immobilized and then imagine a different ending to the story than the one they experienced. It allows the participant to get to have the felt sense that they are no longer stuck in that trauma.A hack we can do in our bodies when we're stuck in our “default mode network” (the place in our brain where we ruminate and store anxiety) is to just look around the room to look where we are. Notice what are five colors we can see, four different shapes… Instead of eyes scrolling endless media, use our eyes to see the tangible around you will help you ground into the present moment.A similar grounding technique Maggie learned is to count down your five senses: what are five things you can see? Four things you can hear? Three things you can touch? Two things you can smell? One thing you can taste? It's a way to start with the world around you and bring you right back in to yourself and into your body.What can be helpful connecting to your breath: following your breath into your diaphragm, breathing out like through a tiny straw. Our breath can be our greatest allies.—-Jenny is reading: My Grandmother's HandsThe Purity MythThe Body Guide for Occupants.Jenny is listening to:Bird TalkerJacob BanksGarth StevensonJenny is inspired by:Pattie Gonia - Drag in the outdoors, being in our bodies impacts our world.Rachael Held EvansTop resources for getting started in learning about your body: Peter Levine's books as well as “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk.Connect with Jenny and get more resources at:www.indwellcounseling.comInstagram: @indwell_seattleWhite, Center, Seattle, Washington

The Beating Heart is an annual benefit concert to help raise funds + awareness for Life Center NW, Paws, Northwest Harvest and Mary's Place. It's going down Friday November 29th at Drunky Two Shoe's in White Center. Listen to one of the organizers Phillip Kennedy + members of local bands Virginia Street Revival and Ten Miles Wide talk about the event and all the reasons why it's so important to them.

Our official Talkin’ Taco Time correspondent Randy Cote joins us live at the original TTNW in White Center to discuss locations he’s visited lately and a pair of famous local favorite items. DOWNLOAD/STREAM TALKIN’ TACO TIME EP. 12 View on … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Music from Natalie Paige, a peek behind the scenes of the West Seattle Farmers Market with Market Manager Jonica Strongman, a visit with Good Day Donuts in White Center, and much more.

This month's guest is Tabitha Crenshaw, co-owner of Walla Walla's The Saint and The Sinner. Our restaurant experiences are all over the Pacific Northwest this month. Donuts and unicorns are coming to White Center, boozy milkshakes are back and Tulalip gets Italian in our news bytes segment. The calendar sees the launch of a distillery fest from the promoters of Taste Washington, Bastille Day fun and a garden party in a great garden. All that and more on this month's show.

Music from Sophia Fay, the West Seattle Pizza Tournament, an update from C&P coffee, a visit with the Chief Sealth High School Mock Trial Team, and a trip to White Center's DubSea.