Got questions for City Councilmembers Rob Saka and/or Alexis Mercedes Rinck?

Brian Callanan, the West Seattle-residing journalist who anchors programs on Seattle Channel, asked us to help circulate his call for questions for his next two guests on City Inside/Out: Council Edition.

(Photos courtesy Seattle Channel)

He’s interviewing citywide Position 8 Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and District 1 (West Seattle/South Park/Georgetown/SODO/Pioneer Square) Councilmember Rob Saka this week. If you have a question for one or both, email Brian via contact@seattlechannel.org by 5 pm Tuesday. He’s looking for serious questions of potential interest to a citywide audience. Rinck is running for what would be her first full term and so far has 78% of the vote in last week’s primary; Saka is midway through his first 4-year term.

Curby never forgets.. August 11, 2025 (10:47 pm)

I would hope we could get a question and answer to why Saka thought we needed to spend 2 million to remove a curb that he considered to be akin to the ‘border wall’ at the conveniently-his-childrens-school. Curby doesn’t forget. Or maybe one on that insane email where folks calling him out we’re declared “radicals” engaging in “culture wars”… These are his words, not mine. https://mailchi.mp/seattle.gov/saka-newsletter-8484704?e=a45d201f56Yeah, curby never forgets..

Jim August 12, 2025 (7:40 am)

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God bless you curby keep up the good work!
Bob smith August 12, 2025 (7:47 am)

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Forget the curb, the real question we should be asking is why a small concrete job cost $2 million? Thats what is driving up the cost of living here.
- k August 12, 2025 (9:06 am)
  
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  It would be zero if our District Representative didn’t focus all of his energy feuding with a traffic safety device.
Mike August 13, 2025 (9:32 pm)

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“Curby” why let the facts get in the way of a good story? The fact that Saka’s kids no longer attend the school in Delridge or that the cost was actually $500K not $2M aren’t convenient to the agenda you’re pushing so you don’t cite them. Pretty weak.
- walkerws August 14, 2025 (8:47 am)
  
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  And the fact that he wanted to make Delridge less safe, while gaslighting his constituents that he wanted to improve safety, while still wasting taxpayer money is the core of the story – and all of that is indisputable.

How should we think about self interest August 12, 2025 (6:44 am)

Curious if those who didn’t like saka trying to fix a problem at his children’s school think that self interest mitigates every request for change? Or only those of elected officials?eg he advocated for this before he was elected, it was part of why he decided to run, etc. Is/was he required to drop his cause when he became elected, could he only advocate for it as an outsider? If so, why are outside self interested requests any more worthy of our time and interest, if they collapse into illegitimacy if any of their supporters end up in office.For context, I’m thinking of other examples such as parents who run for school board to keep their school from being closed, or homeless advocates who run for office hoping to allocate additional funding to address their concerns. Does the same “curby” logic apply here too? Or is the problem only an assessment of the (lack of the) merits of the specific issue?

Fix August 12, 2025 (9:28 am)

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You spend a lot of words abstracting the issue to make this seem complicated, but it’s not. A homeless advocate, or a parent getting involved in the schools, takes on an issue that is generally regarded as serious. Their experience of the problem, one hopes, means they understand the issue’s importance and nuances in ways that will benefit a wider public. By contrast, Saka’s curb vendetta is a focused on something that pretty much no one considers serious, and seeks to expend significant public funds on a project that will benefit him and almost no one else, and will in fact expose other travelers to increased danger of getting killed by a car.Hope that helps
Mike B August 12, 2025 (11:07 am)

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Self interest is certainly important to acknowledge, and it drives many of us.The differentiator is the the degree in which one goes about pushing their own self interest over other priorities, overall intent, and prioritization in general. Saka well-documented 2021 letter to SDOT compared the traffic curb to Trumps border wall, which is a ridiculous comparison in an already ridiculous letter. As our elected representative, per his colleague CM Strauss, Saka’s number one funding priory for our district was to remove this curb. This curb has gotten the Mayor’s personal attention. My question is what other priorities are being pushed aside by our elected representative for this curb?People fighting keeping schools open or ensuring the homeless are housed are far more important societal priorities than a person fighting to remove a curb which prevents a direct left turn into a driveway. And it speaks to Saka’s personal interests and ethics as our elected as his priories clearly demonstrates to us who he is, as well as a reflection of ours given we voted for him knowing who he is.
walkerws August 12, 2025 (12:47 pm)

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Part of the issue is the self-interest, but the great issue is his pattern of faleshoods: advocating to make the road *less* safe, arguing nonsensically that this traffic safety device caused equity issues, and denying the very self-interest at the heart of this issue. I think people would have had less of an issue with the self-interest if it weren’t wrapped in a cocoon of disingenuous and unintelligent gibberish.

Scarlett August 12, 2025 (11:36 am)

Both are political placeholders, really. Oh sure, one might stuff more homeless into shelters or subsidized housing than the other, or one might advocate raising the minimum wage to keep heads above water – barely – but in reality we live in two different America’s, one where the obscene disparity in wealth continues widen every single day. No better example of that than Seattle. Millions are getting priced out of life, so to speak. We are creating a “landed” gentry in this country, where trillions of intergenerational wealth of the upper income is passed down to progeny to tended by financial planners, and then passed down to their children and their financial planners, and then to their children, and on and on. The next conflict won’t be the theatrics of “D” versus “R” because no one will care, it’ll simply be the have’s versus the have nots.