Mayor Ed Murray took to the podium on Sept. 26 to announce his proposed 2017 budget, convinced he knew what news outlets would not cover.
Unified accounting practices across departments. Attention to outcomes produced by public dollars. Dashboards to ensure accountability to taxpayers. These were the things about the budget that Murray was sure would not make headlines, to the point that he parenthetically addressed it in his speech.
“It’s a key point, and I assure you it won’t be in the media,” he said about the accounting practices in one of his few “off-script” moments during the otherwise carefully managed address. His other dig at the press was built into the remarks.
Every moment came off planned, like the overwhelming number of city employees in council chambers despite a large and angry public presence who had been there since 11 a.m. They reported that city employees were taken to the meeting room up a back staircase, something that might have sounded implausible or conspiratorial if Councilmember Kshama Sawant hadn’t addressed the possibility earlier that morning.
“I’ve heard that he’s intending to invite up to 90 of his ‘invited guests’ to fill half of the 130 seats,” Sawant told her colleagues at the 9:30 a.m. council briefing. “I’m concerned that the public will be turned away by the fire marshal when capacity has been filled.”
Some members of the public waited in line for the 2 p.m. address, with no idea that their relegation to the “overflow room” was a foregone conclusion. They weren’t pleased when they found out, screaming out slogans in the lobby and eventually taking the fight to the overflow room.
“Can you hear us? Let us in!” they yelled, making noise with whatever was on hand including, it appeared, smacking a cell phone against a column in the Bertha Knight Landes room, which is immediately underneath council chambers.
Eventually protesters were allowed in for public comment, but their anger at the situation fell only on the City Council’s ears. Murray had left before they were allowed in the room.
Neil Fox, an attorney with thee National Lawyers Guild Seattle Chapter, called the situation “appalling.”
Fox sent a public records request on Oct. 3 asking for extensive information on who was allowed in the Council Chambers and the meeting in the Bertha Knight Landes room prior to the budget speech.
An outline of his budget proposal, by the way, looks like this:
● More funding for Fire Department recruitment, police staffing and new capacity for the terabytes of data that they expect will be produced by the body cameras that will be incorporated into the force
● $12 million to implement Pathways Home, the new plan to combat homelessness in Seattle. That includes cash for coordination and outreach to homeless individuals, 24-hour emergency shelters, money to bring homeless families indoors and money for camp cleanups
● Transit infrastructure spending, including a connection between streetcar service at South Lake Union and First Hill and more electric-vehicle charging stations
● $400,000 for job training and life skills for people coming out of the correctional system
● $600,000 to continue a program to increase opportunities for youth employment
● An increase in the number of summer learning slots for young people, investment in high schools and more funding for evidence-based literacy education for young children.