Friends and Neighbors, It’s natural to want to vote Yes! While it’s uplifting to vote Yes and, more often than not, I’m joining my colleagues to vote Yes on new legislation, some situations call for a vote of “Nay” to encourage amendments or to register objections to some City Council legislation.  With the diverse opinions […]

Friends and Neighbors, In addition to advancing legislation in February, I toured our aging University Bridge that connects several District 4 neighborhoods to the rest of our city; visited with the owner of small businesses in Eastlake; participated in an online meeting of the Maple Leaf Community Council; and appeared on the Seattle Channel’s “Council […]

Friends and Neighbors, Welcome to our first newsletter of 2021! As we continue to tackle the COVID crisis, I believe Seattle can emerge from this pandemic stronger — if we all row together. I outlined what our city can do to achieve an inclusive economic recovery in the Seattle Times last week. Below you can read my […]

Friends and Neighbors, I hope this final newsletter for 2020 finds you and your loved ones safe and healthy during the winter holidays — and hanging on — as we finally see the light at the end of the long tunnel with the COVID pandemic.  It’s hard to believe we’ve already finished my first year […]

[NOTE: More on the Budget: The blog post below discusses the final results of the Fall 2020 budget process (for 2021). For the separate blog post that details the beginning and middle of the process, CLICK HERE. Public Safety: While public safety is a key component of our city budget and is discussed below, you […]

Friends and Neighbors, October has been bursting with work on Seattle’s $6.5 billion budget for 2021. I’ve spent the last few weeks working with the Durkan Administration, my Council colleagues, and constituents to consider how best to finalize a budget that works for all of us in the face of the economic and public health […]

Friends and Neighbors, I hope this newsletter finds you looking forward to the season of Fall — here at City Hall that means budget season. Despite sometimes expressing policy perspectives different from several of my City Council colleagues, I have enjoyed crafting important measures to benefit our district and our city–and then working with those […]

Friends and Neighbors, While City Hall refers to the past two weeks without City Council meetings as a “recess,” your District 4 office continued to work for you—having more conversations about the role of policing in our community, preparing for the bigger budget process this Fall, and responding to constituent requests. After Labor Day we […]

Friends and Neighbors, Due to the COVID pandemic, revenues to our City’s treasury have dropped substantially, creating massive budget deficits (an estimated $325 million this year and $325 million next year). Last week your City Council took action to re-balance our 2020 budget and made initial changes to our police budget. While calling for more collaboration […]

Newsletter: Special Edition on Taxes As the Councilmember representing our District 4, I typically enjoy organizing topics into groups of 4 to explore. But this group of 4 is more daunting. As we are painfully aware, our city is facing 4 epic challenges: COVID: The pandemic continues to take lives even though we moved into […]