By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
The Seattle City Council is off for holiday break. But some councilmembers are sending out their “year in review” newsletters. You’ll probably get one from District 1 City Councilmember Rob Saka, as he concludes his first year in office.
But we didn’t wait for that to talk with him about Year 1 and some big issues, including the impending change at the top for SDOT, and two of his most-touted budget measures. We sat down with Councilmember Saka for a 37-minute video-recorded interview last week at Fauntleroy Schoolhouse. Here it is, unedited:
If you don’t have time to watch, here’s the summary of our Q&A:
First, we asked what he considers his greatest success of the first year: “I am very proud of some of the initial work we’ve done to address our various public-safety challenges. We’ve passed 11 public-safety bills, including to simplify and streamline our officer-recruitment efforts. I’m proud of the initial progress we’ve started to make … police hiring and recruitment is up.”
We asked about the others; he couldn’t name them all from memory, but mentioned the SODA (Stay Out of Drug Areas) legislation and the potential speed/racing cameras for the West Seattle waterfront.
Speaking of which, we asked next, any timeline on replacing the Duwamish Head angle parking with parallel parking (for which he got $175,000 into the budget)? “I don’t have any timeline on that but (SDOT) indicated they will do it … just a matter of time …. I hope it’s done expeditiously … it’s funded, so let’s build it.” And about the cameras? He noted that D-1 will get two new school-zone speeding-ticket cameras, including near Alki Elementary‘s permanent site, but the racing cameras “are a little more challenging.”
What’s his biggest regret about his first year? After his second plug for his newsletter, he said “it’s something I’m still thinking about” in the context of “periodic review and self-assessment” such as what he said he had to do “in corporate America and the military,” so, he concluded, “stay tuned.”
What grade would he give himself for the first year? He declined to assign one: “I don’t want to give myself any grades … I’m. proud of the work that we’ve done so far … I think that’s a question that the people I’m directly accountable to … our neighbors (around District 1) .. they would be in the best position to answer that question.”
Speaking of the constituents, we asked what he’s hearing the most about from them right now. “Public safety, that continues to be top of mind, top of minds and hearts – people are concerned about officer staffing, people are concerned about property crime and small businesses, which is why in the budget we restored the storefront repair fund to help small businesses fund break-ins and damages to their storefronts … So the good news is we have started to make some initial progress … Some things like homicide, for example, we haven’t made the progress we need to make in those areas and so that continues to be top of mind for me and my constituents.”
for the year ahead, what are his public-safety priorities? Saka said he wants “to continue to make progress in police hiring and recruitment, I also want to get a better hold of violent crime, and priority crime as well, those three core areas are where (he expects to be focused and hopes the council will focus too).”
Any specific proposals to tackle those? He said he wasn’t “ready to talk about” that but quickly segued to the crowd-control-related legislation “that could potentially lift the federal consent decree,” with a vote likely early in the new year. Does he think the city has a problem managing crowds without that legislation? Saka said he feels it’s important that people know, regardless of who’s in office, that “as a city we’re going to live up to our values” so that people can protest and demonstrate while others are safe and small businesses are protected.
At that point we asked again if he had anything to say regarding how to crack down on violent or property crime.
He wouldn’t mention anything specific: “More to come … I had some great meetings earlier (the day of the interview) in fact with the City Attorney’s Office to talk about some possibilities to explore any number of things to address the challenges … a lot of it is listening to specific concerns from stakeholders and constituents and we’ve been doing a lot of that as well, and designing narrowly tailored legislative fixes that could address that. The legislative process, I’ve learned this first year in office, is a complex undertaking, it involves input from a lot of stakeholders, so we’ll continue down that path, and continue to collaborate with everyone involved.”
Switching issues, since he chairs the Transportation Committee, we wondered what he’s looking for in a new SDOT director (as Greg Spotts is leaving the job in early 2025)
“This council, we’ve had a two-thirds turnover of members when I took office and that’s been a seismic shift in priorities for the councilmembers, and we’ve learned that some are really concerned with microissues in their own district, myself included – previously we were INFORMED [of projects]…. now I think we want to be brought in earlier in the process so – [the new director should have] the ability to navigate a council district system rather than a citywide system, and all the peculiarities that implies … obviously someone with strong budget ability.” He also noted that SDOT was slow to implement much of the Levy to Move Seattle, so he hopes the new SDOT boss “is able to execute on” everything in the $1.55 billion levy.
Besides execution expediency, we wondered if he’s looking for a change in philosophy.
Saka said he thinks the levy’s “road map” will guide much of SDOT’s work but he hopes the new director will be “someone with hypertechnical expertise, proven leadership, ability to manage various stakeholders, including community, whether that’s the council, or impacted communities that they’re building a project around … we want to do a better job as a city, we always have an opportunity to incorporate feedback.”
By “hypertechnical expertise,” does Councilmember Saka think it would be better for the next SDOT director to have more of an engineering background than the current one? “That could be helpful. I hope they have some technical expertise because one thing I’ve learned as a policymaker, the two most complicated [areas are] land use and transportation policy. So they should have a baseline but they should also have (other characteristics) .. Ultimately it’s the mayor’s choice .. we’ll continue to collaborate with the executive …it’s a very impactful position that impacts people’s lives in (many) ways.”
Regarding the forthcoming comprehensive-plan (“One Seattle Plan”) update, any conversations with mayor’s office about the comp plan before it comes to the council?
Yes, “a lot,” Saka said. But “for the next few weeks it’s an executive [mayor]-led process, the executive has done all the hard work of creating all these maps and legislation.” He didn’t mention any specific areas of interest or concern, so we then asked, “Do you agree that rezoning is the ony way to increase housing and bring down prices?
“Hugely important” but “not the only way … but we know that adding more housing options and choices throughout the city is going to help address some of the broader affordability challenges.”
Is there anything else the council might initiate to help with that process? “I don’t currently anticipate anything in that space but nothing is ever off the table … (but) I don’t sit on the Land Use Committee (but will be on Select Committee to review comp plan,” as will all councilmembers. We then asked if there’s any uniquely district 1 angle, anything in particular he’s watching. Again, no specifics in his reply, just that he’s “gathering feedback.”
Delridge – where Saka lives – has seen a lot of redevelopment. What, we asked him, did it get right?
“Some positive things in terms of development and housing options – we want to make sure we grow responsibly so if we add density we add infrastructure, good example is grocery stores, I support the 15-minute walkable neighborhood … but I know especially living in Delridge that it’s a pipe dream for some … some great fresh food choices in Delridge already and we’re working with community to expand that but Delridge is still a food desert ..so during the budget I funded a study (of food deserts).”
What about displacement? Delridge has certainly had its share. “Part of responsible growth and planning requires anti-displacement policies … like rights of first refusal … relocation assistance … (so displaced people) are ultimately made whole.”
(WSB file photo)
Speaking of Delridge – we moved on to the criticism over what was described as his big budget priority, $2 million for a “safety project” that targeted a divider by the RapidRide stop near the Refugee and Immigrant Family Center Bilingual Preschool, where he’s been a parent. We asked if he felt misunderstood in how that all played out.
Saka replied, “Yeah …. first and foremost I want to speak to exactly what that (project) is … the authorizing budget legislation is several hundred pages … that particular line item speaks to things like boring ingress and egress issues and doesn’t say anything about ‘divider’ so I guess from that standpoint, yeah, there is some confusion swirling around … but ultimately what that project is about . it’s about safety for all … I want to make sure that regardless of your mode of travel – whether you choose to walk, bike, take the bus, drive, by the way, I do all of the above … that you can do so safely within our city … that’s exactly what that project is about … safety for all irrespective of your preferred mode of traffic …. that area affects a small business, a community center, a recipient of our EDI funding, Equitable Development Initiative …anti-displacement, we talked about one form of that, here we are talking about another …”
What were the stats (regarding that stretch needing safety improvements) – crashes? injuries? fatalities? that led you to (call for this)?
“There were years, probably decades, where there was no, the issues we were trying to address through this budget item, the safe ingress egress of all travel, there wasn’t an issue before 2021 when they put this new construction up …so I would be curious to hear from SDOT and the people who designed it about what was the actual data and stats that led them to erecting this thing to begin with … what really was impactful about this was the overwhelming community support we heard … from all communities … RIFC …neighbors … other allies of this community group … dozens and dozens of people took the time to write council, showed up to testify for this safety project for all … that’s really what informed it, community…”
But … what did they say was unsafe, had they had close calls or …
“We’ve learned as part of this that since this new modified construction impacted area, that community has had two or three accidents as a result of that, it’s really safety for all, people wanted to be able to safely navigate around our city as they interact with our transportation infrastructure …”
You mentioned a community center affected by this, is that Delridge Community Center?
He said that was also a reference to the Refugee and Immigrant Family Center preschool.
Are there boundaries for the project?
Saka said we’d have to look at the legislation. What we found was the summary from council staff in the “balancing package” that wrote Saka’s proposal into the budget plan, specifically:
Proviso $2 million in SDOT for transit and roadway improvements on Delridge Ave SW: This Council Budget Action (CBA) would imposea proviso on $2 million of appropriations in the Seattle Department of Transportation’s (SDOT’s) budget to make improvements to Delridge Way SW near the SW Holly St right-of-way to allow for left-turn ingress and egress from adjoining properties, including the Refugee and Immigrant Family Center Bilingual Preschool. These improvements would resolve access conflicts with the operation of the Delridge RapidRide service.
We moved on to another Saka budget amendment, $1.5 million to convert the infield at Fairmount Playground. First we asked for his general comment:
“That is another exciting investment that we’re doing, to fund an infield – and only the infield, so where there’s dirt and mud today, part of the Fairmount Park Playfield will be converted to eco-friendly and environmentally safe turf; we’re just talking about the infield portion …We’ve heard and the council at large has heard overwhelming support in favor of that project. so how that came about, and I sent around a newsletter with a deep policy dive on the topic, first of all, let me say that I am proud to say that this council disstrict, District 1, has the second highest concentration of youth … so we have a lot of working families … including those that rely heavily on softball and baseball so we’ve heard over and over again from constituents in this district and around the city about gender access, gender parity, Title IX issues, and safety, they don’t want to get tripped in mud …playability issues .. so because of a direct response to community, my office proactively engaged with five community baseball/softball leagues that serve my constituents, and the most prominent as it relates to this are wwest seattle baseball and west seattle little league but we engaged with all five that serve all five neighborhoods in District 1 and we put together a list of eight options and then we sent out a survey in september and basically let the community decide. almost 500 people took the survey and the overwhelming favorite was the Fairmount Park playfield. That’s a good example of how me and my office initiated community decisionmaking and incorporated community decisionmaking into the budget. …I realize that with investments you can never please all of the people 100 percent of the time, (but we worked to) have the most impactful investment at the greatest amount and as much as possible try to minimize the impacts on people who might not want that or like that.”
We pointed out that we’d heard from two readers who obtained the entirety of the survey results and discovered that Saka hadn’t in fact mentioned what turned out to be by far the #1 response, “other,” which for many meant “none.” (See the spreadsheet with comments here.) Here are the full results:
Saka acknowledged, “Yes, the number one response was ‘other.’ In fairness, if you want to talk about that, go ahead and talk about the 500 or so “other” responses we got, it was like ‘what does this mean?’ ‘none of the above’ was on that, any number of things, (other locations) because we curated a list of 8, so there was a lot of options, that was the highest response, out of the eight projects that we curated, that was the number one response.”
But so there was no reason to mention those responses, because there were a lot of comments like people wondering about the safety of turf?
Saka countered that “this is a safety project, it’s fundamentally about safety, about playability of the fields, it’s about gender parity – in Seattle more girls’ softball fields tend to be grass and in this case mud because that’s the part that’s going to be converted … so there are a lot of safety concerns that we took into account, and there are three similar infield projects that we funded in this budget across the city, Fairmount was one of them, we also funded one in Garfield, and one in the north end, I don’t remember (exactly where), but it’s part of a strategic plan to increase the number of turf playfields that we have across the city, so it was about safety, it was about those things, we can’t please everyone all the time, but we did hear OVERWHELMING community support from West Seattle Little League, West Seattle Baseball, all the families, coaches, were like ‘yes, we love this thing'”…
At that point, Saka suggested the critics were from or citing “Reddit threads” and we interjected that we were citing West Seattle Blog readers, and he went back to, “all I’ll say is, we heard overwhelming support in favor of this, again I’ll recognize that some people don’t like this, I’m here to be sure we do the best thing for the greatest number.” Does he have any plans to pursue turf for the runners-up? “Not yet.”
In conclusion, we returned to an overview question, noting it’s clearly challenging to deal with the public, so has anything surprised him this first year? “No major surprises – during the campaign I overcame some unprecedented things myself so that was a good precursor or intro to what I signed up for exactly, I still wake up every day and feel honored to do this work. I welcome feedback … that doesn’t mean I’m going to 100 percent incorporate everything you tell me, I always endeavor to listen to everything and make sure that whatever decision I do make is an informed one.”
HOW TO CONTACT YOUR CITY COUNCILMEMBER: rob.saka@seattle.gov is his official email address; you can book a spot during his “office hours” in the district via this form.
Here’s the full-ish (still omits the “blank” responses) results graph from above:
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