My Thanks There is much to be thankful for as I write this on Thanksgiving Day eve.  There are individual people to be thankful for their contribution to making Seattle a better city.  There are groups that I am thankful for as well who, in raising their voices together and with my occasional helping hand, […]

South Park Public Safety Task Force Report Released On Tuesday, the report and recommendations of the  South Park Public Safety Taskforce were presented in the Gender Equity, Safe Communities and New Americans Committee chaired by Councilmember González. The task force was created during the Council’s budget process. The report makes recommendations for both short-term and […]

Public Hearing on Officer Involved Shooting of Charleena Lyles The tragic shooting death of Charleena Lyles, a mother of four young children, last weekend is a stark reminder of how the calls for police reform nationally must continue to be addressed by Seattle locally. On Tuesday I attended the vigil for Ms. Lyles and heard […]

South Park Public Safety Task Force Update During the 2017 budget process, Councilmember González and I co-sponsored a budget action to create a South Park Public Safety Task Force during 2017. South Park had the 3rd highest number of gunshots reported in Seattle neighborhoods during 2016, and the highest increase over 2015, according to Seattle […]

Sweetened Drink Tax Yesterday, in the Affordable Housing, Neighborhoods and Finance Committee the public finally saw the newly proposed bill for the sweetened drink tax.  This has been an issue that I’ve been tracking closely for the last couple of months as I’ve had several concerns about not only how to spend projected revenue, but […]

NCIS Update from the City Auditor I wrote a blog post about the New Customer Information System (NCIS) a little over a year ago. NCIS is a joint Seattle City Light (SCL) and Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) project to replace the Consolidated Customer Service System (CCSS) – the old SCL and SPU billing system. The old system supported billing […]

City Council statement after threats to the Jewish community and New Hate Crimes Hotline Earlier this week the Council issued a statement in response to a bomb threat against the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island and the anti-Semitic and racist graffiti found in Ballard. In the statement, we expressed our condemnation of hate […]

Anti-Hate Resolution As chair of the Committee that oversees Civil Rights, I am charged with providing policy direction and oversight, and making recommendations on legislative matters related to civil rights issues.  In response to Donald Trump becoming the President-elect, there has been an increase in hate speech and acts of violence targeted at Muslims, Sikhs, […]

On June 1st our City proclaimed June LGBTQ Pride Month. The Council and Mayor recognized that the fight for equality is not over and we must continue to lead the nation in establishing policies to prevent discrimination. We raised the LGBTQ flag and promised to continue to speak out against injustice and stand with those […]