Outside City Hall Columns Written By Carolee Colter and John V. Fox reprinted from columns contained in the Beacon Hill News and Capitol Hill Times which may be accessed at http://www.zwire.com/site/News.cfm?brd=855

In order chronologically, our columns include the following (Click on the headline to jump to that article or scroll down this site):

Vol I July 2004:  South Lake Union Agenda Drains City Budget

Vol II August 2004:  More market rate housing development does not solve our housing shortage - unless it's accompanied by tough regulations to steer growth away from existing low income housing, it only causes displacement and gentrification

Vol III: Sept 2004:  South Lake Union Street Moves Forward

Vol IV: October 2004: City Budget This Year is Kinder and Gentler But Still Few Dollars for SE Seattle

Vol.V:   November 2004: Scattered Site Housing for Low income Housing Threatened by SHA's Plan to Sell Off Units

Vol VI: Dec. 2004: Neighborhood Groups and Environmentalists Pulled Apart Over Mayor's Call for More Density in Seattle's Neighborhoods..... it will only hurt both sides

Vol VII February 2005:   Help Wanted:  A New Mayor of the City of Seattle in 2005

Vol VIII March 2005:  One wonders, whose Rainier Valley is this?

Vol IX April 2005:"Seattle's empty promise of preserving affordable housing - and what we can do to change that"

Vol X: May 2005: Plan to end homelessness ignores root causes

Vol XI June 2005: The Travesty of the Lake Union Streetcar Outside City Hall

Vol XII July 2005: Strippergate Can't Hold A Corrupt Candle to Vulcangate

Vol. XIII August 2005: Pitching the Vancouver Way in the Emerald City

        Volume XV: December 2005: Unsung Heroes Honored for their Community Advocacy

        Vol. XVI:  January 2006: Who Will Bell the SHA Cat?

        Volume XVII: February 2006: A Fishy Legislative Stew is Cooking Up at City Hall

        Volume XVIII: Trees Equal Good Health: We don't prevent sprawl by sacrificing trees:

        Volume XIV: Seattle's Big Dig: Why we say 'NO' to a downtown tunnel

        Volume XV: Mayor Ignores Community and Supports Bailey Appointment to SHA Board

Volume XVI: Why you must call 'Gov' and say NO to the Tunnel and Why you should vote no on the $365 million "Bridging the Gap levy

            Vol. XVII: Outside City Hall (reprinted from November 22nd 2006 edition of Beacon Hill News-click here)                       enforcing city codes would eliminate South End blight without enacting Community Renewal Law

        Vol. XVIII: How deserved is Seattle's green reputation?

        Vol XIX: Shoveling Sand Against a Rising Tide of Condo Conversions

        Vol XX: Mayor's New Housing Agenda Downplays Low Income Needs In Favor of Higher Income Groups
                - future funding for low income housing programs would have to be sacrificed to fund higher-                       end development

        Vol. XXI: My recollections of Charlie Chong and why he was so important to this city

        Vol. XXII: A Father's Death Leaves A Legacy of Positive Change Behind

                Vol. XXIII:  July 26, 2007: Outside City Hall: About the Council Races  - our look at the candidates

                                and races

ssss           Vol  XXIV: Seattle’s urban forest is falling victim to the relentless growth courted and rewarded by city     

                                 government land-use policies   

                 Vol XXV: Mayor seeks to subsidize developers and kill affordable housing
                                - city council seeks your input on multi-family tax break giveaway plan
                                - a windfall for developers with no public benefit
                                - plan will actually spur still more displacement and loss of physical character in our nabe's

                 Vol. XXVI: The Transportation Package to No Where: Proposition 1:

                 Vol. XXVII: The Seattle City Council's 2008 budget follies overly favor South Lake Union

                 Vol. XXVIII: A look at life after proposition 1 transportation levy failure - our alternative

                 Vol. XXIX: Outside City Hall Vol. XXIX: reprinted from Beacon Hill News: Zoned out: paying attention

                                   to where the real power to change things sits in Seattle

                 Vol. XXX: It's a crime to be poor in Seattle  (March 2008)

                 Vol. XXXI: What should a new parks levy look like?

                 Vol. XXXII: City Hall Considers Lucrative Tax Breaks for Developers

                 Vol. XXXIII: Attack of the Townhouses

Vol     Outside City Hall  (July 2004)

- A View of Issues Affecting Seattle’s Neighborhoods Vol I

                        - John V. Fox, Seattle Displacement Coalition

(This is the first in a series of monthly commentaries featured in the Beacon Hill News from the Seattle Displacement Coalition.  The Coalition brings a 27-year history of advocacy around low income housing and neighborhood issues here in Seattle.)

Inside sources at City Hall tell us that city revenues this year are falling short and the neighborhoods can expect another round of deep cuts in necessary services.  We understand that the Mayor already has asked the departments to lop 8% from their budgets for a total reduction of about $25 million in 2005.  And that’s on top of $100 million in cuts made over the last three years to $650 million budget.  Community- based programs such as the neighborhood matching fund, library hours, street maintenance, sidewalk repair, and trash pick-up, already dramatically reduced, will be slashed again.

And it couldn’t come at a worse time.  Just last week, the city-appointed Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee (CTAC) identified a minimum $500 million backlog of deferred maintenance for streets, sidewalks, traffic systems, and critical safety repairs on many of our city bridges.  To address some of these needs, CTAC called for greater use of "user fees" and tolls as well as another voter approved city levy.  The levy could raise about $25 million per year with about half going for bridge repairs and the rest towards basic maintenance needs.   But even this would only be enough to prevent further deterioration of neighborhood infrastructure, not make up for the entire backlog.

Against a backdrop of declining revenues and pressing neighborhood needs, what's the Mayor doing with his time? Not long after he was elected he created an interdepartmental team of over 25 staff including department heads and gave them the task of working with Paul Allen’s development company Vulcan Inc. on a plan to turn South Lake Union the biotech capitol of the nation.  Our public records requests show the Mayor’s team has met over 80 times since the Summer of 2002.  While neighborhood folks have trouble finding even one city planner and must compete for small grants that must be matched with their “sweat equity”, quite literally as much as 40 percent of all city staff time is now devoted to the redevelopment of South Lake Union.  Conservatively, plans call for an expenditure of over $800 million for brand new infrastructure in South Lake Union – a 150 acre area where Paul Allen just happens to own 40-50% of the developable land. 

Here’s a quick rundown on only some of the Mayor’s on-going plans in South Lake Union and what it will cost you in public dollars:

1.  This year the Mayor will ask for Council to create a “Local Improvement District” or “LID” to pay for $50 million dollar street car in South Lake Union. According to a City Council staffer, even though area property owners, basically Paul Allen and a few other large owners, could realize as much as a $42 million dollar benefit, the Mayor will propose a special "LID" assessment requiring them to pay only about $25 million of the cost. We taxpayers will pay the rest for what is largely a frill meeting no discernable city need.

2.  The Mayor’s planners also want to spend another $200 million for changes to the Mercer Corridor and for improvements along Terry Avenue and Westlake.  A Council staffer reviewing these plans recently told councilmembers they will not reduce congestion one iota in South Lake Union but are designed to “improve the pedestrian environment” and “support development of a biotech hub”. To pay for this, the mayor’s office has hidden $100 million of the cost in the city’s regional transportation package calling it a “viaduct improvement”.  Yep… every time you hear the Mayor plead for federal or state dollars for the Viaduct, he’s also asking for money to pay for cosmetic changes to Mercer and other roads in South Lake Union.  Even if state or federal dollars are found, that still leaves nearly a 100 million funding gap that must be found elsewhere. Fully 60 percent of new transportation planning and funding in the Mayor's five year CIP (Capital Improvement Plan) is dedicated only to South Lake Union projects including the street car.

3.  The Mayor wants to build a new electrical substation, create a “centralized energy district” to deliver steam, chilled and hot water to the biotech companies, and underground all the wiring in South Lake Union at a cost of over 300 million dollars.  We found City Light documents indicating that under the current rate structure, we would be asked to cover much of these costs in the form of a 2-4% rate increase. 

4. Millions more in our limited tax dollars will be needed for other components of the Mayor’s South Lake Union Plan including an experimental automated metering system, a new water and drainage system for the area, a brand new $25 million dollar waterfront  park, and still more just for annual maintenance.

The Mayor’s office has attempted to justify these expenditures by claiming redevelopment in South Lake Union will return jobs and tax revenues to the City.  But even if the Mayor’s biotech plans pan out down there – a highly speculative assumption - the amount of tax payer subsidy spent for each job is stratospheric. Imagine what we could do with these resources to create jobs in neighborhoods like Southeast Seattle that truly need them. 

At no time has the Mayor or anyone else at City Hall even mentioned the possibility of using developer imposed impact fees either to cover the cost in South Lake Union or as a primary tool that could be used when meeting the city's backlog of neighborhood transportation needs.  In fact, cities across the region are making widespread use of impact fees as a way of ensuring that big developers pay their fair share.   The Growth Management Act specifically authorizes and even encourages cities to use of this mechanism.  Why do our city leaders completely ignore use of these tools and pass an inordinate share of the burden on to us?  I guess the answer is obvious.... Big business and Paul Allen in particular calls the shots down at City Hall all too often.

So...how does all this shape up?  It means that unless our neighborhoods speak up, our city leaders are first going to soak up a lot of existing state, federal, and local tax dollars to pay for Paul Allen's grand plans in South Lake Union - then sock the taxpayers with tolls, more user fees, higher utility rates, and a massive voter approved bond to cover neighborhood transportation needs that our leaders have neglected over the last decade. Perhaps at the next Mayoral election we can all do something about this misdirection of priorities.

John Fox is the longtime Coordinator of the Displacement Coalition.

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reprinted from the Beacon Hill News/South District Journal

Outside City Hall  (Aug 2004)

- A View of Issues Affecting Seattle’s Neighborhoods  Vol II        

                        - Carolee Colter & John V. Fox, Seattle Displacement Coalition

            (This column is the second of a series of monthly commentaries from the Seattle Displacement Coalition.  The Coalition brings a 27-year history of advocacy for low income housing and neighborhoods in Seattle.)

            The denser our city gets, the harder it is for low income and working people to live here.  Maybe that seems counterintuitive.  Certainly, the Mayor and his planners would have you believe that simply by encouraging more development it will lead to lower housing prices.  In fact, Mayor Nickels right now is leading an effort to cram a lot more density into every neighborhood in Seattle and he’s calling those of us who resist a bunch of pro-sprawl “NIMBY”s out to scuttle his affordable housing efforts.  Currently, the city’s comprehensive plan is up for its scheduled ten-year review and he’s using these attacks to generate community acceptance for his pro-density agenda, 

But can the Mayor support his case? Perhaps it would be true if housing simply followed the law of supply and demand, but in fact it doesn’t work that way.  New construction is much more expensive than old.  New units, even with some sort of public subsidy, cost so much to build that they can never be rented or sold for the cost of the units they replace.  By contrast, preserving older apartment buildings and the kind of small, humble single family homes that dot Rainier Valley is the most cost-effective way to keep housing affordable in Seattle.

Economists talk about “market failure” when poor people get priced out of the housing market as if it’s inevitable.  But the Mayor’s call for increased density means that these older, smaller buildings get torn down and replaced with larger, more expensive ones.  That’s because we are a built up city with little vacant land.  Most new development often requires removal of existing truly affordable units.  Each year we lose 500 units of decent lower density affordable housing to demolition to make way for expensive apartments and condominiums.  Another 1000 units are sold to speculators annually who immediately raise rents above affordable levels. In most case these units sit on land zoned for higher density and the new owners eventually plan to redevelop the sites. Consequently, housing never does “trickle down” to the poor.  The Mayor’s call for higher density zoning just accelerates these trends.

            If the affordability argument fails the Mayor, you’ll also be told that your resistance to density will lead to sprawl. But decisions about whether to refrain from building big housing developments, malls and industrial parks in the suburbs are not the city of Seattle’s to make.  Those decisions are up to County Council and the various local jurisdictions.  Sacrificing the livability and affordability of our neighborhoods will not make any difference in what those government bodies decide.  It’s an article of faith with city planners that if Seattle just absorbs enough growth that open space in the county will be preserved.  Perhaps these folks have not taken a drive out to the ‘burbs’ lately.  How many acres of open space have been spared out there that would not have been saved without adding population to Seattle?  It’s an awfully low blow to the neighborhood movement to be accused of causing sprawl and thwarting growth management just because these groups stand for preservation of the intrinsic social and physical character of their communities.  Besides we would not even have a Growth Management Act, Shorelines Management Law, or a State Environmental Policy Act were it not for the active support and work of these grassroots organizations to get these through the legislature and fend off yearly attempts to gut them.

            If we allow the city’s growth to continue at accelerated levels, more and more affordable housing will be torn down and the steady exodus of low income and people of color will continue. The 2000 Census documents the movement of people from all non-white ethnic groups out of Seattle to Tukwila and Renton and Kent and other places in the south county where housing is more affordable.  This trend continues unabated today.  Politicians constantly praise our “diversity” but their decisions lead in the opposite direction. 

            Until we implement new mechanisms that steer growth away from our existing housing stock and prevent demolition—or at least require developers to replace 100 percent of the units they destroy at comparable price—and until we ensure that growth reinforces rather than destroys the character of our neighborhoods, there’s really only four words we should say to the Mayor and the planners who visit our neighborhoods “NO to increased density”. 

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reprinted from the Beacon Hill News/South District Journal

Outside City Hall  (Sept 2004)

- A View of Issues Affecting Seattle’s Neighborhoods  Vol. III

                        - John V. Fox, Carolee Colter Seattle Displacement Coalition

 (This column is the 3rd of a series of monthly commentaries from the Seattle Displacement Coalition.  The Coalition brings a 27-year history of advocacy for low income housing and neighborhoods in Seattle.)

Although a final council vote will come later, our City Council just approved legislation allowing the Mayor to move ahead with planning for a streetcar in South Lake Union. Despite a valiant attempt by City Councilmembers Richard Conlin, Nick Licata, and Peter Steinbrueck to bar use of city funds for the streetcar, other council members overrode them leaving the door open for a huge hit on the city budget.  What’s more, bus service to our neighborhoods is also at risk. 

The full cost of the streetcar is currently estimated at $50 million with an annual operating cost of $1.5 million.   If the Mayor has his way, abutting property owners would be required to pay half the construction costs through creation a Local Assessment District (LID), leaving taxpayers on the hook for the rest.  As for annual operating costs, the mayor likely will seek not only use of general fund dollars but will propose trading away future bus service including any portion of the 20,000 new bus hours promised to the city by Metro through 2006 not yet put into service.  In return that agency would assume operation of the streetcar.

Council members Conlin and Licata were able to secure a special benefits study that could raise amounts SLU property owners will pay.  And they restricted the Mayor to a plan that taps only “new sources” of city funds and “new bus service” but these terms were not defined and could mean anything the Council later decides.

Unfortunately no Councilmember even questioned the wisdom of tapping millions in limited state and federal dollars for the streetcar, despite quality research from the Council's own staff clearly demonstrating that the streetcar serves no real need, (there currently are 19 bus routes serving South Lake Union), costs 30 percent more than bus service to operate, and would drain away millions of limited city, state and federal dollars away from a huge backlog of transportation needs - estimated at four billion dollars regionally and nearly a billion dollars city-wide.

While a final decision whether to build the streetcar and who pays will be made later, the community lost a crucial opportunity up-front to block use of public funds for the streetcar and ensure that benefiting developers foot the bill. More importantly, we lost the chance to send a strong signal to the Mayor concerning the rest of his SLU agenda.

The streetcar really is only the tip of the iceberg.  The Mayor also will soon ask the Council to approve his plans for a $170 million re-working of Mercer Street to make South Lake Union more “pedestrian friendly” and “conducive to biotech development.” And he wants to spend another $20-30 million for road improvements along Westlake and Terry Avenues.  According to a Council staff analysis and a transportation consultant’s report, none of these changes will significantly reduce congestion or improve traffic flows through the area.  But they will divert traffic away from streets abutting Paul Allen’s properties.

To pay for all of this, the Mayor already is exhausting what few chips the City has with federal and state government to cover significant portions of the cost, but he also will make a major assault on general fund sources.  There is a plan to raise parking meter fees at least in South Lake Union and divert them from the general fund. We also have seen city documents indicating the Mayor and Vulcan are discussing a plan to create a new public development authority like Sound Transit or the Port just for South Lake Union.  This new agency could be empowered with the ability to raise taxes or capture a share of existing amounts earmarked for the city’s general fund.

The Mayor has more up his sleeve.  His planners are working on creation of a "growth fund" for South Lake Union that would operate like a “tax increment” district wherein all or most future tax revenues generated in South Lake Union, instead of going into the general fund, would be diverted to pay for the streetcar and the rest of Mayor’s South Lake Union agenda.  Initially, the Mayor would ask the Council to approve use of councilmanic bonds to finance these items and then earmark for 10 or 20 years all future tax revenue generated in South Lake Union to repay the bonds. 

A growth fund is nothing more than a stealth attack on the general fund and the City’s tax base. High growth areas like South Lake Union carry enormous spin-off impacts on the City’s infrastructure and make huge demands on general city-wide services.  Instead of helping cover these budget requirements, all future tax revenues from SLU are diverted to pay for pet projects on the Mayor’s plate for that one neighborhood.  And what happens when other developers able to curry favor with councilmembers and the Mayor also ask for a growth fund to pay for their schemes in downtown or Pioneer Square?  Increasingly the burden of covering our city’s aggregate general fund requirements will fall on fewer poorer communities like SE Seattle.  It also would mean even fewer city dollars would be left over for these areas that already are last in line for services needed in their communities.

Over nine million in tax dollars have already been wasted on planning for the streetcar and other South Lake Union street "improvements”.   Twenty five key staff from all departments and countless consultants and analysts meeting weekly (100 times in the last 2 years) to assist Vulcan realize their South Lake Union dreams.  In the meantime, cuts in public safety have led to increased gang activity in southend neighborhoods, communities go without sidewalks, street lights, and crosswalks for their kids or other basic services, unemployment skyrockets among youth and people of color, and the homeless crowd our shelters.

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reprinted from the Beacon Hill News/South District Journal

Outside City Hall  (Issue #4 Oct. 2004)
- A View of Issues Affecting Seattle’s Neighborhoods

- John V. Fox, Carolee Colter, Seattle Displacement Coalition

(This is one of a series of monthly commentaries we are featuring from the Seattle Displacement Coalition)
This year Mayor Nickels offered a kinder, gentler budget for Seattle residents. In his annual address to the Council he promised to “spotlight Southeast Seattle” and invest $159 million in 190 neighborhood projects over the next two years. His budget speech was in stark contrast to the past two years when he dramatically slashed or froze funding for the neighborhoods. While guaranteeing that “no police officers or firefighters will be cut” this year, he also promised that no direct services for the hungry or needy, or library services would be sacrificed.

The Mayor is approaching an election year and a better economy affords him the opportunity to be generous to the neighborhoods and Southeast Seattle. But are his overtures truly substantive? A closer look at his proposed budget suggests otherwise.

The Mayor calls for about $20 million in cuts to existing programs, compared to $100 million in reductions made over the last two years. He actually projects an increase in revenues at $679 million – up from $666 million last year. But to reach this level, the Mayor has come up with some very unneighborly strategies that include jacking up rental rates for athletic fields, raising swimming fees, and charging folks to park at our city parks including Seward, Lincoln, and Greenlake. 

Perhaps aware of the fact that the human services providers are a formidable coalition at election time, the Mayor has proposed $2 million in funding for a long requested downtown hygiene center. This addition, however, does not make up for over $4 million in human service cuts the Mayor proposed over the past two years.

And despite the increased revenue, inflation and higher labor costs still require some cuts. To account for $10 million in necessary reductions, the Mayor has proposed elimination of 191 city positions spread evenly among the departments.  Most can be eliminated simply by not filling vacant positions. As promised, no cuts are planned for police and fire, other than a few administrative positions.
 

To reach the additional $10 million in cuts, the Mayor has offered scant detail. We do know, however, that he will propose complete elimination of the city’s 55 year-old bookmobile service saving the City about $800,000. Remember that this comes on top of drastic cuts in library hours and a million dollar reduction in the book-buying budget over the last two years, which have not been restored.

And the Mayor’s plan does in fact cut funding -- $317,000 – for several human service programs including those serving Southeast Seattle. Word is that the Council will likely restore funding for these programs but bookmobiles as of now don't have even one champion on the Council despite a growing outcry from seniors and the disabled.

But what about the Mayor’s wild claim that he’s going to spend $150 million on 190 neighborhood projects over the next two years? Turns out that most of these projects have long been in the pipeline and paid for out of voter-approved special levies for parks, library, and community centers. He even called the long planned undergrounding of the Beacon Hill reservoir a new initiative for the area. In reality, we are not seeing some grand re-prioritization of general fund dollars from downtown to neighborhood projects as the Mayor suggests. We’ve had to ante up extra taxes to pay for them.

The Mayor has budgeted $3.5 million for the City’s neighborhood matching fund for 2005 when in previous years he froze these dollars tying up dozens of long awaited neighborhood projects. In 2001 our previous Mayor committed $4.5 million for the matching fund.

And what about the Mayor’s new spotlight on Southeast Seattle? Just how real is that? The Mayor offers these three new initiatives in Southeast Seattle:

1) $1 million over two years for development of a new facility and programs for the Asian Counseling and Referral Center – a valuable jobs, counseling, and referral program especially for first generation immigrants.

2) $75,000 to “implement a economic revitalization strategy for Southeast Seattle.”

3) $1 million to the Urban League for the Coleman School Black History Museum.

In total these new programs represent a shift of less than 1% of the Mayor’s $677 million budget to Southeast Seattle. The other projects cited by the Mayor -- repaving some arterials, the Sound Transit's Mitigation Fund, parks and stream improvements -- were funded from past budgets, through special levies or covered by other agencies.

Compare these commitments to what the Mayor already has spent in South Lake Union (SLU)--over $9 million since 2001 to plan for a streetcar and changes to the Mercer Corridor--and the millions more he plans to spend there. Of the $200 million in new transportation projects included in the City’s five year CIP plan, the Mayor has earmarked $145 million of that for just two projects – changes to the Mercer Corridor and the SLU Streetcar (neither of which, according to a Council staff report, will do anything to relieve congestion but merely are intended to make the area “more biotech friendly.”)

While our neighborhoods face an identified $500 million dollar backlog of needed transportation improvements, the lion’s share of the city’s local, state, and federal transportation dollars over the next five years already are earmarked for SLU. That means the Mayor needs new sources of revenue to fix the neighborhood backlog. For that he has indicated he’s going down to Olympia seeking new taxing authority. In otherwords, Paul Allen grabs our general fund dollars while we pay extra for the basics.

Recently, through a public disclosure request, we uncovered a two year-old city document stating that over 290 staff meetings were budgeted at a cost of over $400,000 just to make plans for changes to the Mercer Corridor. Now compare that to the Mayor’s new $75,000 economic development strategy in Southeast Seattle.

A shift in city priorities? A “spotlight on Southeast Seattle?” Not this budget.

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Outside City Hall (Dec. 2004 Vol VI)

- A View of Issues Affecting Seattle’s Neighborhoods

 - John V. Fox & Carolee Colter Seattle Displacement Coalition

(This column is one of a series of monthly commentaries reprinted from the Dec. issue of the Beacon Hill News and written by the Seattle Displacement Coalition.  The Coalition brings a 27-year history of advocacy around low income housing and neighborhood issues here in Seattle.  This may also be accessed on the Beacon Hill News Website at http://www.zwire.com/site/tab3.cfm?newsid=13672634&BRD=855&PAG=461&dept_id=520818&rfi=6)

For over three decades neighborhood groups, low income housing advocates, and environmental organizations have worked together.  Their collective efforts led to passage of the Growth Management Act, Shorelines Act, and other environmental laws.  They blocked the Bay Freeway, the I-90 and 520 expansions and a host of other bad auto-oriented projects.   They worked together, locally, to secure support for growth limits on downtown high-rise expansion, controls on demolition of low income housing and helped preserve the Pike Place Market.

Now it seems, in an attempt to advance aggressive pro-density agenda, our Mayor and a few other elected officials are trying to pull these natural allies apart.  Unfortunately, they are having some success with these efforts.  After meeting behind closed doors in the Mayor’s office, a few prominent leaders in the environmental movement as well as some low income housing providers have come out in favor of elements of the Mayor’s plan to upzone large areas of Seattle including Northgate, the U-District, and South Lake Union.  What’s worse, some of these folks are also leveling heavy criticism at neighborhood groups.  Anyone striving to preserve the unique social and physical character of their community is automatically labeled a pro-sprawl anti-mass transit “NIMBY.

The issue of density admittedly is divisive.  In theory increasing density along public transit will encourage ridership, making transit more cost-effective, while preventing sprawl in rural areas outside the city.  In reality, increasing density leads to the loss of low-income housing, driving poor people out of the city into the surrounding suburbs.  In an earlier column, (July 2004 edition- see above), we pointed out that new units, even with some sort of public subsidy, cost so much to build that they can never be rented or  sold for close to the cost of the units they replace.  Because Seattle is built-up with little vacant land, most new development results in removal of existing truly affordable units.  Preserving older apartment buildings and small single family homes is the most cost-effective way to keep housing affordable in Seattle.

We’ve heard Manhattan held up as an ideal for the future of Seattle.  A recent check on the web showed the cost of buying a home in Manhattan exceeds $1.2 million and rents even for a studio run above $2300 per month.

Perhaps when we think of sprawl, we envision wealthy people living in McMansions on the Issaquah plateau, driving SUV’s to work in downtown Seattle.  Whether that stereotype is true or not, there is another type of sprawl to consider—people who work as janitors, dry cleaners, wait staff and retail clerks in all those little businesses expected to pop up at transit stations, living out in Kent or Renton because they can’t afford the rents in Seattle, driving their more humble cars to work. 

While low-income people get forced out of Seattle by economics, some at the other end of the scale might opt out in favor of more trees, more open space, more breathing room.  Are families with children going to prefer to live in apartments in South Lake Union if they could afford to live in a single-family neighborhood—or Issaquah?  We can’t make them live near where they work, so we have to think in terms of making it attractive to do so.  We would argue that one reason Seattle has attracted and kept people at the higher-earning end of the spectrum is its single family neighborhoods with their trees, gardens and other small natural spaces.

Moreover, single-family neighborhoods are not just for the wealthy.  About 20 to 25% of single family homes in Seattle are occupied by lower income renters including many families.

People who put down roots in a neighborhood often get attached to what makes it distinct, socially and physically.  When housing prices go steeply up, neighborhoods lose some of their human diversity.  When large hulking structures sprout up blocking sunlight and views, these places lose some of their visual diversity, too.  The sameness of architecture we’ve seen going up lately along Seattle arterials is disheartening.  If that is what upzoning is going to mean for a neighborhood, you can see why people would fight it.

Ironically, the push for higher density at all costs and without consideration for impacts on the physical or social character of our city, has done more to erode affordability and contribute to sprawl than any other single policy thrust by city government. Growth must proceed of course but first we must insist on regulations that ensure:

     * Design and siting criteria respectful of the existing character of the neighborhood

     * Requirements that developers replace all affordable units they remove and at comparable price

     * Promotion of in-fill over demolition and redevelopment.

Even under existing zoning and even with some vacant land locked up in single family areas, we still have substantial capacity to accommodate new development that does not require tearing down existing housing or historic structures. We can meet and even exceed our growth requirements without a lot of demolition.

Ultimately, the long-term solution for growth in our region is to relocate some employment now planned for downtown to suburban areas closer to where many are going to choose to live anyway.  The greatest cost of a transportation system is the cost of energy and infrastructure needed to move people longer and longer distances to work whether its by road or rail or HOV or vanpool.  Instead of the Manhattanization of Seattle, let’s work toward this polycentered approach to growth, making more effective use of areas already zoned commercial/industrial but currently underutilized.

Environmental and pro-mass transit goals, historical preservation, and housing affordability are not advanced by trashing the neighborhood movement.  The only beneficiaries are large development interests that put profits ahead of a quality of life in our communities.

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Outside City Hall Volume VII: reprinted from February 2005 issue of Beacon Hill News

Help Wanted:  A New Mayor of the City of Seattle in 2005

(This is one of a series of monthly commentaries we are featuring from the Seattle Displacement Coalition)  

There’s a Help Wanted ad that needs to be posted in every newspaper in Seattle.  That ad would read something like this:

“Help Wanted: Someone with name familiarity, lots of dollars or ability to raise them, and proven leadership experience, willing to take on Greg Nickels for Mayor in 2005.  A large coalition of community leader seeks strong leader who will give first priority to our neighborhoods and small businesses, with the goal of ensuring equity, jobs, and affordable housing  for low income people, communities of color, and others now marginalized by the policies of our current Mayor.  The successful candidate will in the past have distinguished herself or himself as a strong advocate for these values central to the well-being and soul of our city…”

During the four-year tenure of Greg Nickels, these core city values have been pushed aside in favor of an agenda that overtly favors downtown and large corporate interests like no other time in this city’s history.  Mayor Nickels has slashed programs for the poor and failed to even begin to address the nearly one billion dollar backlog of transportation and other basic infrastructure needs in our neighborhoods.  Nor has he chosen in any way to stem the gentrification and displacement that is driving housing prices up and many longtime residents out of Seattle.  In fact, Nickels’ policies aimed at promoting runaway growth have only served to accelerate these trends, driving a deeper wedge between rich and poor, and white and non-white in our city.

While many of our neighborhoods, especially communities of color, go without economic development, or even sidewalks, crosswalks or critical bridge repairs, Mayor Nickels has already made tens of millions of dollars available for his pro-downtown and  South Lake Union biotech agenda. If he is re-elected, he plans to spend nearly one billion more just in these two concentrated areas of the city.  By contrast, directing only a fraction of those dollars into our neighborhoods like Southeast Seattle would do far more to generate tax revenues and jobs.  And the jobs we would generate would assist low- income people, communities of color, the unemployed and underemployed – those who really need them.

Our current Mayor has also tread heavily on public involvement processes established over a 30-year period that used to precede all critical land use and other policy decisions affecting neighborhoods and small businesses across the city. Despite the fact that Mayor Nickels repeatedly expressed his devotion to the “Seattle Way” four years ago when he campaigned for the job, his staff now speaks derisively of those processes.  Nearly every community group in the city in fact has a horror story to tell about how city planners defied the goals and policies in their neighborhood plans painstakingly developed under previous Mayors after countless hours of community participation.  To Mayor Nickels and his staff, the neighborhoods and their planning efforts are simply obstacles in the way of his plan to substantially upzone large tracts of our city.  Virtually every Seattle community is affected by his pro-density agenda.

Insider polls of the electorate indicate that Mayor Nickels is not invincible.  There is still a great deal of anti-incumbency fervor out there, sentiment that two years ago led voters to un-elect three incumbent councilmembers.  Those feelings have only been reinforced by the shameless way the Mayor and his departmental staff cater to downtown and special interests. Mayor Nickels cannot pursue his superfluous tunnel alternative for the Viaduct, Paul Allen’s streetcar, a Mercer reconfiguration (that only makes traffic worse in that area), on top of the monorail and light rail – not without indefinitely postponing long overdue work on our city’s neighborhood infrastructure.    Nickels solution to this dilemma - drain away our limited existing city, state, and federal dollars for these mega-glamour projects, then for the basics - go to Olympia for authority to impose more regressive taxes – tolls, higher gas taxes, utility taxes - and float more voter approved bonds. This is exactly the kind of recipe that produces a Tim Eyman-like anti-tax backlash, something so far we’ve avoided in Seattle.   A candidate running on a platform of fiscal prudence, putting neighborhoods first, combined with social justice could offer a real alternative to voters.

Key decisions fundamentally affecting the distribution of wealth and the future of this city will be made this coming year and before the 2005 fall elections.  Without any opponent, the Nickels team will interpret that as a mandate to impose their agenda with no consideration for how it will affect the city budget, affordability, historic structures, neighborhood quality/livability and the displacement of low-income people from Seattle.  As it is, most of our current councilmembers have little backbone and often cave-in to the Mayor’s steamrolling tactics. And, if Greg Nickels is elected and serves out a second four-year term, it could be too late for any future elected official – or any of us – to restore justice and fairness to the governance of our community.

The rest of that Help Wanted ad would go something like this:

“The job of candidate for Mayor is just waiting to be filled by someone committed to helping ensure a brighter and more equitable future for all of the residents of our great city - someone up to the task of re-setting our course and returning to the values that have made Seattle so livable.  As activists working on a broad range of critical issues affecting the future of this city, we urge you to strongly consider mounting a campaign for Mayor of Seattle in 2005.  We’ll work nights and weekends to help you get elected.  Submit resume to the general public on or before March 1st[CC2] .”

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One wonders, whose Rainier Valley is this?

Outside City Hall Vol VIII:  A view of issues affecting Seattle's neighborhoods  By CAROLEE COLTER & JOHN V. FOX 03/02/2005  reprinted from the March 2nd edition of the Beacon Hill News

The controversy around the plans for the old Chubby & Tubby site on Rainier Avenue reveals the outlines of a struggle for the soul of Rainier Valley. At first glance, it would seem that CASA Latina, a non-profit with the mission of "empowering Latino immigrants by providing educational and economic opportunities," would fit nicely into the loudly praised diversity of the Valley. The organization must soon leave its Belltown location at Western and Battery where it has leased space from the city since 1998. With the aid of a city grant, CASA Latina would purchase the Chubby & Tubby site and consolidate its programs into a permanent home.

Currently CASA Latina dispatches between 25 and 100 people each day into temporary jobs. But it is much more than a job referral agency. CASA Latina also has placed over 400 homeless people into permanent well-paying work and helped countless others recover back wages. Through its women's leadership training, adult ESL (English as a Second Language), counseling and other educational programs, CASA Latina also gives people "the tools they need to raise their standard of living and become productive members of the Seattle community."

Opposition to the Chubby & Tubby site falls into two camps. In one camp we find the immediate neighbors who fear a recreation of the current day labor free-for-all at their site in Belltown. With the loss of thousands of downtown housing units and hundreds of blue collar waterfront-related jobs and a corresponding increase in homeless shelters, soup kitchens and hygiene centers plus the free-ride bus zone, Belltown has a high concentration of truly destitute homeless people including some with alcohol and drug disabilities in desperate need of services and housing.

For over 60 years the intersection of Western and Battery has been an open-air labor market where prospective employers drive by and pick up workers for everything from unskilled yard work to temporary construction jobs. The Millionaire Club's labor-ready program two blocks away from CASA Latina's Belltown site responds to this phenomenon. Latino immigrants who themselves are not necessarily homeless have come to this location, too, looking for work. CASA Latina started its day labor program in order to organize Latino workers and provide for safe and dignified interactions between employers and workers. However, other day laborers that are not part of CASA Latina, compete by undercutting wages. A few sometimes are drunk and disorderly. Even though these folks are not part of CASA Latina's program and would not follow it to a new location in Southeast Seattle, this is what the neighborhood residents fear.

In the other camp are the leaders of the Rainier Chamber of Commerce. Their vision for the Valley, first articulated by chamber president Darryl Smith, calls for upscale retail stores, offices and high-end apartments in 4-to-6 story buildings, where a wealthier population will supposedly live and work without use of cars, due to proximity to the light rail station at McClellan. The Chubby & Tubby site would be a grand gateway aimed at counteracting the Valley's alleged downscale image in the eyes of potential investors.

Despite the fact that Casa Latina provides jobs, counseling and other services to a population of Latinos that make up a significant percentage of the Southeast Seattle population (about 8 percent), the scions of the business community were outraged that the city was willing to provide funds for CASA Latina at this location. Given that 40 percent of all Rainier Valley residents are foreign-born, one wonders why the Chamber would cast such a negative light on a program that serves immigrants.

At a highly charged community meeting on February 15th at the Mt. Baker Community Club, neighbors of the proposed site, organized into South McClellan Action Committee (SOMAC), shouted down supporters of CASA Latina and charged that the facility would bring increased traffic, public drunkenness, more crime, and predation on children waiting for school buses near the site. We certainly can empathize with citizens who might have felt blindsided by Casa Latina's plans. No prior notice was given either by the city or CASA Latina.

However, to suggest that Latino men are prone to drunkenness, disorderly conduct and more likely to attack children or women waiting for the bus, tips perilously close to racism. Statistically speaking rich white men perpetrate more sex crimes and drink excessively more than any other group. One speaker for SOMAC claimed that CASA Latina is "dumping their garbage on us."

Despite the overt hostility of some surrounding neighbors, opposition from area business leaders is more troubling to us. They seem to believe that Rainier Valley's best interests lie with development that replaces rather than reinforces the existing character of the community. Yes, Southeast Seattle needs economic development but it must be tailored to the interests, needs, and skills of the folks who live here. Lacking that, any reinvestment by the city or private investors can only translate into gentrification and displacement. We're already losing long-time residents, especially people of color, due to impacts from Seattle Housing Authority's HOPE VI projects and Sound Transit. More of that and the diversity we all profess to value will be nothing but a memory.

As long as we go on demolishing low-cost housing right here in the Valley for another condo or shopping center, there will be more homeless on our streets - not castaways from Belltown but growing numbers dispossessed from our own neighborhood including families with children. As long as we lack community-based drug and alcohol treatment for those in need here in the Valley, there will be more folks acting out on our streets.

CASA Latina provides jobs, services and educational opportunities to help new immigrants get off the streets. But it also is aimed at empowering the Latino community and developing and implementing larger strategies to overcome poverty and homelessness.

As such, Casa Latina could do a lot for the Valley to help retain and bring in a broad array of services and housing this community desperately needs. In contrast to high-end retail shops that don't cater to the broad spectrum of our community, (and that pay notoriously low wages), CASA Latina represents precisely the kind of "economic development" we need.

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"Seattle's empty promise of preserving affordable housing - and what we can do to change that"
OUTSIDE CITY HALL by CAROLEE COLTER & JOHN V. FOX  Volume IX
04/28/2005 (Reprinted from the Beacon Hill News)

Every year we lose about 2,000-4,000 low-income units to demolition, speculative sale, abandonment, conversion and increased rents. For every one unit we build with limited public funds, we lose three to four times that amount to the forces of redevelopment and gentrification. As we write this column, the land use committee of the Seattle City Council is entertaining changes to the downtown land use plan and zoning changes elsewhere around town proposed by the mayor. This will translate directly into the loss of even more low-income housing in our city.

Tearing down existing apartment buildings and replacing them with new, larger ones always results in increased rents in the new units. The inflation in building, land costs over time, and the desire of developers to maximize their profits all work against replacing older units with newer ones for the same price.

That's why the mayor's rezones aimed at adding increased density in our neighborhoods will only exacerbate our city's shortage of low-income housing, unless the council intervenes to either prevent demolition or guarantee 100 percent replacement of the destroyed units.

Seattle has a long-standing commitment to preserve existing, affordable housing in neighborhoods where those opportunities now exist. Such a policy, in one form or another, has been part of the city's comprehensive plan for over two decades. However, without adopting specific mechanisms to either prevent this loss or ensure replacement of units at comparable price, this commitment remains a hollow promise.

From the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, housing preservation was an integral and well-publicized component of all housing assistance plans adopted annually during that period.

The key mechanisms for preserving low-cost units were as follows: 1) an anti-abandonment law requiring developers to keep habitable units open and occupied, 2) a demolition control law that required developers to replace the low-income units they destroyed, and 3), a mandatory code-inspection program ensuring regular inspection of all lower priced rental housing and tenant housing in the city.

The anti-abandonment law remains on the books but is not enforced in the wake of a federal court decision from over a decade ago. There are additional provisions of Seattle's law that could still be enforced, but they are simply ignored by Department of Planning and Development (DPD).

These unenforced provisions allow the city to order repairs, and even condemn and obtain residential properties, when they are not maintained.

Two court decisions struck down our old demolition control law, excepting a provision barring developers from tearing down low-income housing for parking or empty lots. But even that vestige of the original law is not enforced by, or it's just circumvented by, the DPD. A good example is the case of Paul Allen's Vulcan Company demolishing the Lillian Apartments in the Cascade community.

In the wake of the second court decision in 1987 which struck down the demolition control law, city leaders passed an
18-month moratorium on housing demolition in downtown and on the removal of low-income mobile home parks city-wide. They also committed themselves to replacing that law with a legally defensible alternative, but there was no follow-up when the moratorium expired.

The city did continue enforcing a section of that law requiring developers tearing down housing to provide relocation assistance to displaced low-income tenants, although the mayor and council unilaterally withdrew enforcement of it while a court case was pending over protests from activists.

However, courts eventually upheld the right of cities to require relocation assistance, and in the mid-1990s, thanks to
Councilmember Nick Licata, the city passed a new law requiring developers to provide up to $2,000 in relocation assistance to low-income tenants who are displaced due to demolition.

The mandatory code inspection program per se was not struck down, only the method of raising revenue to pay for the
program by charging fees to owners. In a court settlement with property owners, however, the city gave away its right to adopt a new mandatory program with differing methods of financing until 2004. That year has come and gone with no action by city officials.

What's left of the city's preservation laws are some minimal provisions obligating Harborview Medical Center and the
University of Washington to replace housing they demolish for expansion. We also have a toothless condominium conversion law adopted in the late 1970s that requires early notice and limited relocation assistance to displaced tenants, but it doesn't  prevent actual conversion of low rent apartments to condos .
 

To fulfill Seattle's promise of preserving affordable housing, we believe the upcoming council decisions on rezones must be accompanied by passage of a resolution committing the city to a six-month process culminating in the identification and adoption of new housing preservation tools.

These mechanisms would either help prevent removal of units in neighborhoods where they now exist, or ensure one-for-one replacement at a comparable price. The resolution should also commit the city to adopt such measures as a prerequisite to the approval of new neighborhood plans and any future land use and zoning changes that add residential or commercial density in our neighborhoods.

As part of this resolution we envision the creation of a citizen task force to be appointed by the chair of the city council's housing committee and consisting of housing and tenant advocates, non-profit housing developers, and representatives of the development industry, with support staff's time allocated from the office of housing.

The task force would be charged with assessing the loss of low-income units, quantifying the problem, studying practices in other cities, and then reporting back to the council with a set of recommendations for adoption.

If council simply approves the rezones proposed by the mayor, it will be business as usual. Our leaders will continue to bewail the rising costs of housing. We will be urged to upzone more and more areas of the city as if that would make housing more affordable.

Or we could make a public commitment to stem the loss of the valuable resource right under our noses: our existing low-cost unsubsidized housing units.

©Pacific Publishing Company 2005
 

"Outside City Hall" is a monthly commentary from the Seattle Displacement Coalition reprinted from the Beacon Hill News and can be accessed there at:

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Plan to end homelessness ignores root causes
OUTSIDE CITY HALL Vol X: JOHN V. FOX & CAROLEE COLTER - A view of issues affecting Seattle's neighborhoods reprinted from Beacon Hill News and Capitol Hill Times 05/25/2005

Every day in King County over 50 social service agencies provide shelter and/or counseling to 2,500-3,000 homeless people. City and county governments fund these programs to the tune of over $20 million a year, not counting additional funding from United Way, churches and the private sector.

Nevertheless, the number of homeless on our streets has continued its relentless upward climb, greatly outpacing the capacity of this expanding service delivery system. Where 25 years ago there were few programs and a few hundred homeless on our streets (mostly in downtown Seattle), today estimates run as high as 8,000 homeless people county-wide on any given day.

A new effort, however, has recently emerged, boldly calling itself the committee to End Homelessness. Over two dozen social service agencies, church organizations, King County, the City of Seattle and United Way have combined forces and promised to guarantee "a roof over every bed" by 2014. The Committee has set up a website while the city and county have committed over $200,000 to staff the effort.

Countless meetings over the last two years have brought together dozens of human service providers, agency officials and community leaders. The list of participants reads like a Who's Who of local electeds and agency heads.

The committee recently released a 52-page report calling for improved cooperation and better linkages between homeless programs and the public and private sector. The plan also calls for better data collection and tracking of homeless needs. It emphasizes the regional scope of homelessness, and calls on municipalities county-wide and private donors to do more.

A key provision of the plan urges the region to add 4,500 new low income housing units and acquire another 5,000 existing low-income units over the next decade.

These components of the committee's plan are laudable. But in spite of its goal to "end homelessness, not manage it," the plan is conspicuously lacking in programs and strategies that would attack the problem at its roots.

The committee to End Homelessness has not indicated where we are going to get the additional funding needed to secure 9,500 additional low-income units over the next 10 years. The report should have called on elected leaders county-wide to immediately identify new funding sources such as a region-wide housing levy, creation of a housing "growth fund" earmarking a portion of future county-wide tax revenues for housing, or better yet, use of impact fees so that developers share in the cost. Such sources are needed if only to compensate for planned deep cuts in federal housing programs, a threat the report fails to adequately highlight as well.

But even if these 9,500 units are created, unless we put controls on the loss of existing housing, for every one of those units that are secured, we will continue to lose three to four times that amount to the forces of gentrification and redevelopment.

Every year in Seattle alone, developers demolish over 500 low-income apartments to make way for office buildings, expensive condominiums and parking lots. Another 1,000 are sold to speculators who immediately raise rents above what low-income people can afford.

Our mayor and most of our city councilmembers have actively encouraged these trends by approving rezones and other land use changes that concentrate more growth precisely in the areas where our remaining low-income stock is located. This only accelerates the loss of existing units serving the poorest of the poor, with more homelessness the inevitable result.

While not directly involved in this current effort - call it task force fatigue - the Displacement Coalition has participated in numerous homeless and housing task forces and blue ribbon committees over the last 25 years. Most of these earlier efforts at least recognized the causal relationship between growing numbers of homeless on our streets and the continuing loss of low-income housing due to demolition, abandonment, conversion, and increased rents.

In contrast, perhaps to avoid treading on the feet of big corporate donors and those elected officials who might commit funding for its programs, the committee's 10-year plan offers no solutions aimed at curbing developer actions that cause displacement.

Even more troubling, as we read through the lengthy report, is that it begins to look like a plan to institutionalize and further bureaucratize our response to homelessness. The emphasis of this report clearly is on adding new layers of ever more complex service delivery systems and identifying ever more sophisticated ways to track, categorize and process the homeless and to move them "seamlessly through a continuum of care," whatever that means.

One would think that since this was a plan to end homelessness, it also would come with a timetable for phasing out the vast system of shelters and services only needed so long as the homeless remain a ubiquitous part of our landscape. Quite the contrary, the plan only refines and entrenches the system of service delivery.

For those immersed in the overwhelming task of delivering programs to the homeless, and inundated with more people than they are capable of serving, we can understand why they would want to focus so heavily on how to maintain, manage, and expand their programs. Indeed, until our elected leaders are willing to aggressively respond to the forces of gentrification and displacement in our community and other root causes like the absence of decent paying jobs or a progressive tax structure, this may be our only alternative.

Despite the well-intentioned efforts of a lot of good folks on the Committee to End Homelessness, they are caught in a Sisyphian quest - rolling that rock up a hill only to see it fall back down- where our only choice is to convene one more task force, revamp that system of service delivery one more time, and if possible expand it yet again, in an attempt to meet a need that always outpaces our ability to address it.

We can do better but it must start with a greater willingness on the part of all of us, including the service providers themselves, to demand real accountability from our leaders.
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Outside City Hall by Carolee Colter and John V. Fox, Seattle Displacement Coalition (July '05)

Strippergate can't hold a corrupt candle to Vulcangate

“Strippergate” is back in the news.  Glaring front page headlines announced last week that the county prosecutor will pursue criminal charges against the owners of Rick's Strip Club, Frank Colacurcio and his son, for allegedly funneling illegal campaign contributions to City Council incumbents Wills, Nicastro and Compton two years ago.  The three had voted in favor of a controversial rezone benefiting the club.

The City has a $650 dollar lid on individuals’ contributions to any candidate in each election. The Colacurcios are accused of dodging that limit by slipping cash to friends, relatives, and associates who then gave that money to the three incumbents.  Relentless coverage of these illegal donations dominated the news during the 2003 election and contributed to the defeat of Wills and Nicastro.  Just for good measure voters also kicked Margaret Pageler out of office even though she had nothing to do with the scandal.   Lacking a credible challenger at the time, Compton was narrowly re-elected. 

While too much has been said about “Strippergate," little or nothing has been said or done about more important and far-reaching examples of how special interests shape city decision-making.

In the fall of 2003, the Seattle Displacement Coalition filed a complaint with the Ethics Commission that was subsequently upheld, charging Councilmember Compton for failing to disclose at least one free trip he took on Paul Allen’s Vulcan Company private jet with free admission to a Portland Trailblazer game, refreshments, and seating in Allen’s private box. Compton then joined in critical votes favoring Vulcan’s agenda, including co-sponsorship of a resolution committing the city to the promotion of biotech development in South Lake Union. Compton only acknowledged these ethics violations after they were discovered and made public by the press. 

In the wake of this clear case of influence peddling, neither the Ethics Commission nor County Prosecutor further investigated Vulcan’s or Compton’s conduct.  Compton was only required to abstain for one year from a narrow set of “quasi-judicial” matters directly affecting Vulcan’s interests.  Conveniently, the bulk of council actions related to Vulcan would not come up again until that year had expired.  Today, Compton again is championing Vulcan’s plans in South Lake Union. 

Last year the Coalition also filed a complaint with the Seattle Ethics Commission charging the Mayor with accepting illegal contributions to his office fund in 2002 and 2003 from Vulcan, Inc..   At the time of these contributions, Vulcan was under contract to the city and actively negotiating other lucrative contracts. City ethics laws bar parties from making donations to the office fund while under contract or pursuing contracts with the city. While Vulcan refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, the Mayor returned over $500 in contributions from Vulcan.  The Ethics Commission did not question the veracity of the Coalition's charges and affirmed the appropriateness of returning the funds to Vulcan.  But it did not choose to seek charges or fines against either party. 

These breaches of ethics involving the largest player right now in city politics, should have at least suggested the need for a deeper investigation of Vulcan’s role.  This year, Vulcan and its employees already have given $3100 to the Mayor’s re-election.  Companies and their employees with interests directly tied to Vulcan’s agenda in South Lake Union have given another $9000 to the Mayor. City Council President Jan Drago has received from Vulcan and its employees alone over $2500 for her re-election campaign.   

Last year in August, Jan Drago sponsored a fundraiser for the Vulcan-backed “Build the Streetcar” campaign. Vulcan and other benefiting property owners used this campaign to promote council approval of the street car.  The campaign also lobbied councilmembers for creation of a local improvement district (LID) that would restrict their contribution to only $25 million of the streetcar’s $50 million cost.  By sponsoring or even attending this fundraiser, Drago likely violated state “appearance of fairness” rules, because she knew at the time that she soon would be voting on the LID.   Such Council votes are considered “quasi-judicial” and require councilmembers to abstain from giving prior support or even meeting with potential beneficiaries of pending actions.  Yet Vulcan representatives met numerous times with Drago, the Mayor, and other councilmembers prior to this vote and surely must have discussed how much they would pay under the LID.

In the Council elections of 2003, an investigation by the Stranger showed that Compton received $13,000 in contributions from Vulcan, its employees and related interests.  It was during that campaign that Compton took his airplane ride on a Vulcan jet.  In January 2004 the Stranger also broke the news that Mayor Nickels hosted a fundraiser the previous month for two incoming city councilmembers, Jean Godden and Tom Rasmussen.  Many in attendance, according to the Stranger, were affiliated with Vulcan, Inc.  According to records filed with the Ethics Commission, that fundraiser brought in $4,575 for Rasmussen and a similar amount for Godden.

Two days earlier, on December 8th of that year, Vulcan, Inc. threw its own fundraiser for Rasmussen at Allen’s Experience Music Project.  Later in the month one was planned for Godden.  A source quoted in the Stranger said, “Vulcan higher-ups spent the weeks before the Rasmussen fundraiser making phone calls to low-level Vulcan contractors and suppliers, none-too-subtly encouraging them to join the party.”  A check of election records for the month following Vulcan’s events shows that together Godden and Rasmussen received over $60,000 in contributions during that period. 

“Strippergate” is a tawdry soap opera about an aging former area porn kingpin and his son bundling contributions from friends and families to skirt campaign finance limits.  Their goal was a rezone to expand a parking lot.  Vulcan and its lobbyists are seeking over a half billion dollars in city subsidies along with rezones.  And we’ve got a Mayor and key councilmembers falling over themselves to support the entirety of the Vulcan agenda – an agenda that casts a long shadow over the future of this city.   If “Strippergate” can continue to dominate the attention of the Ethics Commission and now the County Prosecutor’s office, when will we see the Vulcan connection get the attention it deserves?  

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Outside City Hall by Carolee Colter and John V. Fox 
 

Seattle officials like to tell us we’re too provincial. When they want
us to swallow some grand scheme, they’ll point to Copenhagen, Singapore,
Manhattan, even Portland and tell us we’ve got to emulate them and “grow
up”. Now we’re being urged to look north to Vancouver. In particular
Mayor Nickels has used Vancouver to justify his new downtown plan – a
plan designed to raise building heights and double the amount of office
space. And at the request of developers, he’s trying to fast-track City
Council approval of that plan before the year is out.

In response, Peter Steinbrueck, chairing Council’s review of the Mayor’s
plan, has called for a much more thoughtful review with approval of any
changes coming no earlier than next spring. And he’s taking a more
careful look at Vancouver's downtown planning process compared to
Seattle’s. Just last week, he brought in two highly regarded Vancouver
planners to critique the Mayor’s plan.

Speaking to a crowd of over 200 at a forum on August 15, Ray Spaxman and
Larry Beasley questioned whether the Mayor’s plan was adequate to
generate enough additional housing in the downtown core to balance the
amount of new office space called for. Today in downtown Seattle there
are about 17,000 housing units but nearly 170,000 jobs, a ratio of 1 to
10. By contrast Vancouver has at last count 70,000 housing units in
their downtown area while moving at a more measured pace with respect to
office expansion, with a ratio of 1 to 2.

Although the consultants couched their words in polite terms, the
implication of their concerns was clear. Without changes, the Mayor’s
plan would greatly increase the existing housing/jobs imbalance and we’d
be facing the mother of all traffic jams -- far worse than today --and
even higher housing costs throughout Seattle. Without measures to
promote enough additional housing downtown, all those new office workers
will seek homes in our neighborhoods, driving up costs, or live in the
suburbs and clog roads into town as they commute to their jobs.

The Mayor’s plan would attempt to cure this sprawl-inducing imbalance by
upzoning areas like Belltown for more housing. However, as Spaxman and
Beasely point out, our downtown area already has considerable capacity
for more housing. The problem is getting more downtown office workers to
live there, especially families. As they wrote in their report, family
households “will only be attracted to communities that have good
schools, parks, child care facilities, services and community centers.
These are the very households that make up most of the demand for urban
sprawl.”

It will take careful planning and control over how each block is
developed. Land must be set aside for schools, grocery stores, parks,
and open space. More importantly, the consultants say we must expect
more from each developer in the way of impact fees and an improved bonus
system to help us pay for these amenities. While Mayor Nickels will ask
downtown developers to contribute impact fees to pay for open space,
more should be expected from them if in return they get to max out
downtown with office space.

While the Mayor's plan calls for large massed residential towers 60 feet
apart, Vancouver’s codes require tall narrow towers to be set back from
the street and limited in floor area so as not to block views, while
mandating street-level row houses, historic preservation and abundant
landscaping on the rest of the block. If we want to attract people to
live downtown, we shouldn’t create a set of deep canyons lined with
expensive retail shops that close at 5 PM.

One thing Spaxman and Beasley, and Steinbruek, too, fail to do -- they
don't face up to the fact that we could never build enough housing for a
downtown work force double its current size. We should instead be
limiting the amount of new downtown office jobs while we pursue a
"polycentered" regional growth model that relocates many of our
downtown’s office jobs to other fast-growing but still underutilized
commercially-zoned areas in the county so that people who already live
in Lynnwood, Bothell, Kent and Renton can work closer to their homes
instead of commuting into downtown Seattle. Regardless of what we do to
make our downtown more livable, a large portion of the workforce will
continue to choose to live in the suburbs.

Another concern largely overlooked by the consultants is the impact of
the Mayor's plan on our city's dwindling stock of low income housing.
Downtown Seattle was once home to over 20,000 people of modest means,
many of them retired blue-collar laborers who lived in Single Room
Occupancy (SRO) hotels. Despite a 1985 Council pledge to preserve and
expand low-income housing in downtown and despite expenditures of over
$100 million for replacement housing since then, the number of low
income units downtown today is less than 6000.

To overcome anticipated additional losses of low income housing
resulting from even more office density encouraged under his plan, the
Mayor is gambling on a bonus system for developers that would allow them
extra height and office density if they pay into a fund for low income
replacement units. Even if successful, this mechanism cannot raise
enough funds to replace what was lost over the last 20 years, let alone
compensate for future housing losses resulting from the excessive office
densities given away under that bonus system.

By contrast, Vancouver has a one for one replacement requirement for
their old low income SRO hotels in three downtown neighborhoods, plus a
form of rent control, city-wide, and site by site and block by block
controls over development to guarantee no net loss in many other
neighborhoods. Like Seattle, they too made a pledge over a decade ago to
preserve all of their downtown low-income housing stock. But Vancouver
fulfilled that promise, preserving all 13,000 low income units in their
downtown.

This is how to emulate Vancouver—in livability, jobs/housing balance,
social justice and limiting runaway office development. Now that’s
“smart growth!

For an interesting detailed demographic comparison of Seattle and Vancouver click here:
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Local Unsung Heroes Recognized for their Community Advocacy

OUTSIDE CITY HALL

December 2005

Since the holidays are a time of good cheer, the two of us thought we would shift the attention of this column away from our usual focus on our city leader’s hapless misadventures.   The viaduct’s future, the Mayor and City Council’s plan to fill our city with more street-clogging density, expensive condo’s and 700 foot tall office buildings while pouring all our tax dollars into South Lake Union - as important as it will be for us to respond to these issues in the coming year - they can at least wait until the Christmas lights are back in the closet and all the eggnog in the fridge is spoiled.   In the spirit of the season let’s turn from our city’s dismal lack of leadership at the top and the pessimism it engenders to look instead down into our communities where real leadership is always found.  There are many unsung heroes out there working away at the grassroots and for this column what we want to do is feature some of them who because of their tireless efforts actually give us hope for our city’s future.   

In most cases, when civic awards are passed out, it is the people who do essential charity work that are recognized or the accolades are doled out to the famous people who fund those charities.  Such recognition is of course deserved but what about the contributions of those whose efforts are aimed at redefining those structures of power that give rise to the need for charity in the first place.  For a change we want to recognize those who are willing to challenge the status quo and who give of their time and energy to work for economic justice and democratic participation in our neighborhoods. And don’t tell us that Seattle no longer has visionary leaders like we did 30 years ago…we’ve heard this bogus elitist refrain too many times from columnists who only take their que from what they hear at the monthly downtown chamber luncheon.   As 2005 nears its end we’d like to take this opportunity to recognize five citizens of Seattle who have made a difference in effecting real social change in Seattle.

Juan Bocanegra

If anyone ever exemplified the maxim to think globally, act locally, it would be Juan in his 30 years of activism in Seattle.  For Native Americans struggling for their fishing rights, migrant farm workers organizing a union for better working conditions and homeless and mentally disabled people trying to live with dignity on the streets of Seattle, Juan has been a powerful advocate. 

His efforts on behalf of immigrant laborers led to a trenchant analysis of globalization and how it degrades the quality of life for people in the Third World and here at home.  At the same time, he is personally involved in local efforts of communities of color to hold police accountable, preserve low-income housing and form effective coalitions.

Juan has led and participated in many organizations, including the Downtown Human Services Council, A Territory Resources (now called the Social Justice Foundation), Labor and Employment Law Offices (LELO), and many more than we can mention in this short space.  In everything he does, he maintains the interconnectedness of all struggles for racial, economic and social justice. 

Katy Carter

In this column we’ve often decried the corrupting influence of big money on our political process.  Katy is doing something about that.  She heads Washington Public Campaigns, whose mission is to pass legislation in Washington akin to the clean elections laws in Maine and Arizona.  Through public funding of election campaigns, these states are already realizing increased candidate diversity and voter turnout. 

Katy also coordinates classes for young democrats considering running for public office, with presentations by high-powered elected officials and grassroots activists.  As an active member of the 43^rd District Democrats, she represents the best of what the Democratic Party can be, the voice of working people instead of corporate lobbyists.

We first knew Katy as an aide to former Councilmember Heidi Wills.  In that position she helped us in our efforts to hold Seattle Housing Authority accountable and preserve low-income housing.

Sinan Demirel

Back in the early ‘90’s Sinan was a UW grad student working toward his doctorate in sociology, studying homelessness.  But he wasn’t content to just observe the problem.  He launched one of the most successful meal programs in Seattle. 

From there he went on to found and direct Rising Out Of The Shadows, (R.O.O.T.S.), the only shelter program in the city specifically addressing the needs of homeless young adults. These young people are too old to access youth shelter programs but often feel unwelcome or threatened in emergency programs serving mostly older single adults. 

Based in the University District, the ROOTS shelter involves a cadre of trained volunteers and features a Friday Night Feast with restaurant quality food.  But Sinan goes beyond these important forms of giving – he is an agent for social change too – regularly on the front lines at meetings and in forums challenging elected leaders to do more for his clients and to redirect city resources their rather than to the wealthy. Sinan is known by his friends as a fantastic cook and organizer of tours to observe the best and oddest of Christmas lights and topiary in Seattle.

Jeannie Hale

Laurelhurst is one of Seattle’s most affluent communities.  You might expect the Laurelhurst Community Club to be a bastion of privilege, remote from the needs of low-income neighborhoods.  However, under the leadership of Jeannie Hale, the LCC not only represents the immediate needs of that community, this group regularly gives it’s support to larger city wide causes on behalf of low income people.  Jeannie and the LCC recognize that ultimately their communities well being is linked to our city’s ability to address these larger social issues. We regard the LCC as a stanch ally of the Displacement Coalition.  

Also for the past several years Jeannie has chaired the Seattle Community Council Federation, a citywide coalition of community councils that grew out of a 1960’s movement in response to urban renewal and redlining in Seattle.  Completely outside of city government, the Federation represents genuine grassroots activism. 

From both her roles with the Federation and Laurelhurst Community Club Jeannie has steadfastly worked for neighborhood control, physical preservation of neighborhoods and limited growth, but while critiquing the inequitable distribution of resources in the Mayor’s South Lake Union agenda.

Using the provisions of the Growth Management Act, the Laurelhurst Community Club sued the University of Washington to limit its expansionist plans.  As part of their settlement they won preservation of green space, citizen review mechanisms and other mitigations of the impacts of the University’s expansion into Laurelhurst.

Rachael Myers

Like Sinan, Rachael came to advocacy as a college student.  Throughout the ‘90’s she maintained a network of youth shelters and recruited student volunteers to work in them.  Through the Coalition for the Homeless and the Human Services Coalition, she coordinates large turnouts at public hearings with testimony about the effect of city budget cuts on homeless people and writes grants for funding. 

Now Rachael is the associate director of Real Change.  She’s gone down to Olympia to coordinate Homeless Lobby Day where state legislators learn about the impact of their own budget cuts.

Like the other people we’ve recognized here, Rachael is content to work behind the scenes.  Wen someone says, “We need something done,” Rachael is the fist to volunteer.

Thank you, Juan, Katy, Sinan, Jeannie and Rachael.  And thanks also to the dozens of others out there who we could have named and should also be recognized for their tireless efforts in this community Because of you, Seattle is a better place to live for ALL its citizens.

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OUTSIDE CITY HALL   1/12/06: "Who Will Bell the SHA Cat"

(reprinted from Jan Beacon Hill News) by Carolee Colter and John V. Fox

Much is said about the need for accountability in government spending, but when it comes to action, we’re like the mice in Aesop’s fable asking, “Who will bell the cat?”  A provision in a bill from state representative Mark Miloscia might just put a bell on the cat’s collar when it comes to Seattle Housing Authority’s continued destruction of low-income housing and the use of state money to pay for it.