Seattle is the only large city in the US that hasn't had a homicide in 2025

Also introducing "In Praise"

Jan 18, 2025

Seattle News:

Seattle is the only large American city that has not yet experienced a homicide this year.

There was a public safety committee meeting on Tuesday where councilmembers discussed the new less lethal weapons legislation. I wrote about that meeting for The Urbanist. Warning: at times it got rather colorful!

Today, the Council narrowed down the list of candidates for the open D2 council seat from 20 applicants to 6 finalists: Chukundi Salisbury, Mark Solomon, Adonis Ducksworth, Thaddaeus Gregory, Edward Lin, and Hong Chhuor. There will be a public forum for these finalists on Tuesday, January 21 at 5:30pm at Columbia City Theater, hosted by Seattle CityClub. Current councilmembers will make their final selection on Monday, January 27.

Pedro Gomez, who served as Mayor Bruce Harrell’s director of external affairs, has resigned after facing rape allegations from someone with whom he was having an after-hours business meeting. Marcus Harrison Green interviewed the woman pressing charges who was torn between her views as a prison abolitionist and her desire to protect her community and hold Gomez accountable.

This week PubliCola followed up on the 30x30 pledge made by SPD to have 30% of their sworn staff be women by 2030. In 2024 86% of the 84 new officers hired were men, a number reflective of gender breakdown in applicants more generally.

PubliCola also reported that Kevin Dave, the SPD officer who was fired last week, two years after hitting and killing Jaahnavi Kandula, has appealed his firing. The Public Safety Civil Service Commission held an initial hearing on this appeal on January 16, but the case could take a long time to be decided.

King County News:

King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay was just unanimously chosen by his fellow councilmembers to be the Chair of the King County Council. He is also running for the County Executive position in November, as is fellow Councilmember Claudia Balducci.

King County Council has a vacancy due to Dave Upthegrove’s recent election to Public Lands Commissioner. Councilmembers will have to select someone to fill Upthegrove’s spot, and committee assignments are expected to be made in February.

WA State News:

Last week I went down to Olympia for a special media event before the legislative session began this Monday, January 13, which I found very enlightening. As a result, I wrote a piece for The Urbanist: Ferguson Pushes Budget Cuts as Washington Legislature Seeks New Revenue.

As my readers doubtless know, I cover Seattle’s budget season in some detail every year, and I was pleased to be able to apply some of that budget knowledge to understanding what’s going on with the state’s budget right now. I posted on Bluesky that the state budget that gets passed this year will have reverberations for years to come. We’re still experiencing consequences from the austerity practiced at the state level from the Great Recession, so that gives you an idea of how impactful lawmakers’ choices are this year: how much and where will they cut, what programs will they delay (and what will their plan be for making sure the delay isn’t permanent?), and will they pass new revenue options to help ease the difficulty?

Even the legislature’s decision as to whether to raise the property tax cap for local municipalities (cities and counties) will have strong ripple effects either way, as King County, for example, continues to struggle with its budget as its revenues have had no way to keep up with expenditures due to the high inflation a few years ago.

On Wednesday, our new governor, Bob Ferguson, gave his inaugural address, which seems to have made Republicans happier than Democrats. You can read a recent interview with Ferguson here. Ferugson also signed three executive orders on his first day: one to work to protect reproductive rights in Washington and two related to housing regulations and permitting.

Nick Brown, the new Attorney General taking over the office from Ferguson, is unhappy about the cuts Ferguson has said he wants the office to make. The Seattle Times reported that Ferguson protected the office’s funds while he was Attorney General but as governor has changed his tune. Brown opposes the cut, saying it will impact the office’s ability to take on civil rights and anti-trust cases.

In Praise:

I was thinking over the winter vacation about how to incorporate joy, hope, and a positive vision into the work I do. For those of you who know me personally, it will come as no surprise that these are part of my daily project of living, and yet it is also true that in my journalism work, I am most often covering very serious topics that can be emotionally taxing and discouraging to engage with.

I also think that political thought does not need to be inherently bleak and depressing, a statement which I realize is especially bold on this particular weekend. But perhaps it is more important now than ever to remember this.

For an example, I offer up the novel I’ve been working on for the past year, the second in the Satori Chronicles series, entitled Stars, Hide Your Fires. The first novel in that series was distinctly a dystopia, but this new one is not. This new one imagines how a society could be better: not perfect, not a utopia. Indeed, one of the main themes of the book is that societies cannot be static and perfect but must be continually invested into and engaged with or risk falling into complacency and potential injustice. But better.

In the process of writing this novel, I’ve realized that what seems on the surface to be a simple act–to imagine a world that is a bit better than this one or the dystopia portrayed in the first book–can feel subversive. It was, it turns out, not always easy to imagine such a world and how to set an interesting story within it. It was certainly more difficult than following the tried and true path of the dystopia. In spite of its challenges, it has been a rewarding experiment, trying to create this more positive vision.

In that spirit, I am experimenting with adding this “In Praise” section to the newsletter. I have been waffling about it, not wanting to create more work for myself, but this morning I was reading Orwell’s Roses, a book by Rebecca Solnit, and I came across this quotation from George Orwell and realized I’d made up my mind:

“A correspondent reproaches me with being ‘negative’ and ‘always attacking things.’ The fact is that we live in a time when causes for rejoicing are not numerous. But I like praising things, when there is anything to praise, and I would like here to write a few lines–they have to be retrospective, unfortunately–in praise of the Woolworth’s Rose.”

What a wonderful thing to publish in a column! Orwell wrote this at the beginning of 1944. Now here, at the beginning of 2025, some of us might also feel like the causes for rejoicing may not be numerous. But that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to take some time to appreciate the roses.

Notes from the Emerald City