Karl Wirsing

Published July 24, 2015 – video interview below

Parking is the big issue that Karl Wirsing, 35, a Delridge resident who works as director of communications for the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, says he keeps hearing about.

FIRST WSB MENTION OF HIS CANDIDACY: Mentioned as filing week ended

ABOUT THE NEW COUNCIL: He doesn’t think the new council – seven neighborhood reps and two at large – “will be as factionalized” as some fear. He think the councilmembers will “find an awful lot of overlap” in their interests.

AFFORDABILITY: He says he’s also been hearing a lot from people who are having trouble affording living and/or running a business here. He also has heard concerns from people who feel the neighborhood’s personality is being lost: “How do you keep West Seattle, West Seattle for people who moved here 30 years ago, or a year ago?”

WHAT COULD HE DO ABOUT THAT AS A COUNCILPERSON? Talking to people all over the peninsula to hear a variety of viewpoints, for one. “Policy-wise – I guess it depends on the angle you take,” related to many issues, including the potential zoning changes. “I don’t run into anyone who’s opposed to density or new development … but everyone wants it done in a way that involves them, so they have a share.” He wants to proceed with caution on the housing-affordability/rezoning proposals. He thinks the character of some single-family neighborhoods needs to be preserved, because too much change might take away the sense of a longstanding neighborhood where people know each other. “You want something that respects trust … you don’t want to make policies that hurt the people who are already living, working, raising their families here. … Part of that is when you are building new apartments, making sure that some of them are affordable.” Elaborating on that, he mentioned the common kind of teardown that removes affordable older housing and replaces it with much-more-expensive new apartments.

RENT CONTROL: He thinks the state law preventing it should be repealed.

TRANSPORTATION: “Light rail, light rail, light rail” is what he sees as a solution to some of West Seattle’s problems. But he acknowledges that many details remain to be worked out. In the nearer term, he is concerned about the difficulty of getting across the city by bus – up to two hours to get from the UW to West Seattle, for example. More bus-only lanes will help, but new routes going across town would be required.

WILL HE VOTE FOR ‘MOVE SEATTLE’? “I don’t love it,” but he’s going to “begrudgingly” vote for it, because he feels it’s important for the city to “keep investing.” He also doesn’t think voters are fully aware yet of what’s in it and what’s not. He says he hears a lot of concerns about “drivers being squeezed out,” though he adds that he is a fan of bicycle and multi-modal commuting – he mentioned he was going to try biking to work the following week (he’s written online about how it went).

WHAT’S NOT BEING DiSCUSSED ENOUGH IN THE CAMPAIGN? “General environmental issues … I think there’s a huge opportunity to focus on a bunch of issues,” including the Duwamish River cleanup, “protecting our parks and greenbelts” – he mentioned trees coming down because of construction – he favors the concept of preserving more land, even not as “full-blown parks,” to keep it in reserve, because once it’s gone, it’s gone.

HOW DID HE WIND UP IN WEST SEATTLE? He worked in Washington, D.C., with Rails to Trails Conservancy and started visiting his brother who is a professor at the University of Washington (where Wirsing now works).

WHY VOTE FOR HIM? “I’m the sort of person who really believes there’s always a solution, I’m always looking for a way to say yes to a great project (or) good idea.”

SEE HIS INTERVIEW WITH US: Noting that he jumped in during the final days of filing week, we started by asking why he wanted to run.