What would Seattle do without JumpStart?
Seattle News:
Budget Chair Dan Strauss released his balancing package for the 2025-2026 City budget this week (presentation here). This new budget proposal actually increases the amount of JumpStart dollars moved from JumpStart spending priorities to the General Fund, which now clocks in at a gobsmacking $305 million.
As The Stranger reports: “Strauss’s balancing package proposed two new tiny shelter villages, additional funding to the storefront repair program, four new 911 dispatchers, another $10 million for the Seattle Police Department (SPD), Council Member Rob Saka’s goofy proviso to remove the traffic barrier on he compared to former President Donald Trump's border wall, and much more.”
You can read more about Saka’s plan to remove a traffic calming measure right next to a preschool here. Not only is the amount he put under proviso for this project a stunning $2 million, but at the budget meeting, Strauss announced that Saka had told him this self-serving measure that will actually decrease safety for those in the neighborhood was his top priority for the budget. You can’t make this stuff up.
You can read my op-ed at The Urbanist about the Mayor’s proposed JumpStart legislation that would remove the guardrails on JumpStart tax revenue spending, permanently siphoning it into the General Fund as needed. The proposed legislation also gets rid of the JumpStart oversight board that was meant to provide much needed oversight and transparency to the expenditures of this major source of progressive revenue for the City. Unsurprisingly, I argue that these are both poor ideas.
Before we get to this week’s SPD drama, some Seattle Municipal Court news: the ACLU of Washington is suing the Seattle City Attorney over their blanket policy to file affidavits of prejudice against sitting Judge Pooja Vaddadi for all criminal cases. The ACLU states: “The city attorney’s actions go beyond a mere impediment to functionality – the city attorney has effectively removed a sitting judge from the bench.”
On Monday, former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz and SPD Communications Director Jamie Tompkins were placed on paid administrative leave. Diaz is still receiving his annual “chief’s” salary of $339,000, and KIRO reports he hasn’t been seen at Police Headquarters in weeks.
KUOW reported Diaz was placed on leave for allegedly lying during an investigation. The investigation in question was conducted by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) around a complaint that Diaz had hired a romantic partner to a top-level position at SPD, assumedly Tompkins. KIRO reported Diaz also potentially violated department policy.
Diaz responded by filing a $10 million tort claim against the city, Mayor Bruce Harrell, and Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess. The claim alleges Diaz was discriminated and retaliated against, as well as harassed, when he expressed his sexual orientation to Harrell and Burgess, and also alleges Diaz refused to commit an “illegal act.”
Regarding that illegal act, The Seattle Times reports: “While he was chief, Diaz was also directed to take actions he believed would violate police officers’ due process rights and other regulations, Downs said, declining to share specifics.”
In other news, PubliCola reports that SPD officers have a demonstrated pattern of speeding, even when they’re not responding to high level emergency calls: “The data shows that SPD officers regularly drive at speeds higher than 80 mph and sometimes even over 90 mph, on streets with speed limits between 25 and 30 mph. Officers consistently drive well over 70 mph on perennially dangerous streets such as Aurora Ave. (which accounts for 20% of Seattle’s traffic fatalities) and Martin Luther King Jr. Way S, where the SPD dataset showed at least 270 instances of speeds exceeding 70 mph.”
One noteworthy example is former SPD officer Daniel Auderer, who made international headlines when he was recorded mocking the death of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula. On the night he went to assess whether Kevin Dave, the officer who hit and killed Kandula, had been driving impaired, he was driving consistently at 90mph and sometimes over 100mph. This was not, of course, in response to an emergency call.
King County News:
King County’s 100 Days of Action against gun violence is officially over as of October 18. Gun lockboxes are still in the process of being distributed, with several events planned for November. Next, the Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention will develop a five-year plan.
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