Change at the top for city’s Department of Neighborhoods

Since taking office five months ago, Mayor Durkan has made many who’s-staying-and-who’s-going announcements, but hadn’t said whether she would keep Kathy Nyland as director of the Department of Neighborhoods. Though Nyland – appointed almost exactly three years ago by then-Mayor Ed Murray – had a background in neighborhood-group leadership, she drew some fire for championing Murray’s plan to cut the city’s ties with neighborhood-district councils. This afternoon, Durkan announced that she’s moving Nyland out of DoN:

Seattle Mayor Jenny A. Durkan announced that Andrés Mantilla will serve as Interim Director of the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, effective May 16, 2018. Mantilla currently serves in the Mayor’s Office as the Director of External Relations and Outreach. Kathy Nyland will continue working in the Durkan administration as a senior advisor at Seattle Parks and Recreation focused on community and neighborhood outreach.

“From day one, I committed to bringing City Hall directly to neighborhoods, and the Department of Neighborhoods plays a critical role in building strong partnerships directly where people live and work. Kathy has worked tirelessly to help communities across Seattle have a strong voice in their government, and her leadership has helped to foster more coordinated, citywide outreach on Seattle’s most urgent challenges. We will build on her important work to bring more equitable engagement to our neighborhoods,” said Mayor Durkan. “As we address growing disparities and make our City more affordable, Andrés will be instrumental in elevating the voices of community members throughout Seattle. His commitment to equity and communities of color will elevate the work of our City.”

Mantilla has deep roots in communities across the City. Prior to his role in the Mayor’s Office, Mantilla worked on community and small business outreach at the Department of Neighborhoods and Office of Economic Development as well as on the Community Outreach Team for Mayor Greg Nickels.

(WSB photo of Andres Mantilla: 2011, when he visited WS as a representative of the Department of Economic Development)

K. Lyons April 27, 2018 (8:14 pm)

Will Nyland still be in charge of P-Patches? She has done so much damage to the P-Patch Program, will she still control us?

WSB April 27, 2018 (8:23 pm)

I believe Neighborhoods remains in charge of P-Patches, not Parks, the department she’s moving to.
- K. Lyons April 27, 2018 (8:43 pm)
  
  WSB, Thanks! We have been struggling for a year now with the P-Patch/DON problems. We work really hard and we can support ourselves and more. We just need a little cooperation.

WSFam April 27, 2018 (9:57 pm)

K. Lyons, that’s exactly what I was wondering as I read the announcement. The P-patches and staff need more support. They are an invaluable resource for our community, and a great source of pride for countless families in our city. Started in 1973 Seattle’s P-patch program has become a national model for a city-run community gardening program. It needs more support!

Sarajane Siegfriedt April 29, 2018 (2:11 am)

To say that Kathy Nyland “drew fire for cutting the City’s ties to the Neighborhood Councils” is an understatement. In addition, she abandoned Town Hall Meetings as an outreach tool, and substituted tabling events with posters and one-on-one conversations with City staffers, leaving many attendees who showed up for a meeting frustrated and angry. Her tailored HALA Focus Groups were so frustrating that attendance dwindled. As a result, the outreach plan for the HALA MHA left out most neighborhood input, and the EIS drew over 700 negative comments. She’s now an outreach specialist at Parks, not a management job.

WSB April 29, 2018 (7:37 am)

That was the headline around here but certainly we have covered a lot of those changes too. The first significant HALA-related “meeting” here was an overcrowded tabling debacle at an undersized restaurant:

https://westseattleblog.com/2016/12/happening-now-2-location-city-open-house-at-youngstown-shelbys-to-talk-hala-rezoning-parking-policy-parks-future-fauntleroy-boulevard-more/

…and while the city tried to make up for the advance “are you kidding?” warnings by adding another concurrent location, that didn’t help. Even worse, they threw in a variety of other topics besides HALA, like the parking-policy changes that recently were finalized – which we only found out had been added to the open-house topics because we went to an earlier open house in another part of the city to see what people were going to be told/asked about:
https://westseattleblog.com/2016/12/also-at-wednesdays-open-house-city-parking-policy-plus-3rd-venue-added/

There were some projects for which the open-house/tabling format seemed suited – like park development – but something huge like HALA … not so much.

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