Ferguson

Seattle looks to tighten its budget belt for 2027

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Seattle News:

I wrote about how Seattle’s new drug ordinance is going about two and a half years in. It’s not good, to put it mildly. Drug arrests are up, LEAD referrals are down. Even Councilmember Bob Kettle thinks it’s a failure. Be on the lookout for a revamped drug ordinance later this year. And District 2 only had 2 LEAD referrals in a one year period. I checked in with Councilmember Eddie Lin’s office after the public safety committee presentation, but he hadn’t yet received any answers as to why that is the case. 

SPOG made an interesting X post last week, calling Kent Loux, SPOG’s new president, “Seattle’s top cop union boss” and blaming “what’s gutting downtown” on socialism. But hey, at least Loux hasn’t started up his own SPOG podcast…yet. 

Mayor Katie Wilson and her Budget Director Ali Pennucchi sat down with Brian Callanan on the Seattle Channel to discuss Seattle’s budget. 2027’s budget now has a $175 million deficit. Wilson has asked all city departments to prepare models for 5% and 10% cuts, and has said she wants to address the deficit through a combination of cuts and new revenue. 

Wilson said there’s no “silver bullet” when it comes to a new progressive revenue source that could provide a permanent fix for Seattle’s structural budget problem. 

Wilson also said she didn’t foresee winding down the work of the United Care Team anytime soon. 

You can read my live-posting of the budget presentation here. It’s worth noting that $175 million is close to 10% of the total $2 billion General Fund. 

PubliCola wrote about an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) audit on the practice of retiring SPD officers going on extended leave to take advantage of accumulated sick leave. A new policy requiring officers to provide verification for taking sick leave is supposed to go into effect later this year. 

Looking at this coming Tuesday’s public safety committee agenda, the OIG will also be doing an audit on SPD overtime usage in the future, so that should be interesting. 

PubliCola covered what appears to be some communication issues between the new Mayor’s Office and the City Council. The land use committee still ultimately approved Wilson’s shelter expansion proposal. 

Surveillance News:

The City Council of Shoreline cancelled a planned meeting with Flock Safety after residents expressed their dismay.

Both Tukwila and Renton had Flock Safety/ALPRs on their agendas for their Monday, 5/4 meetings. 

Issaquah has Flock on the agenda for their Monday evening meeting on 5/11. 

WA State News:

Last week I published a story all about the Washington State Supreme Court elections, with a majority of the seats on the Court being on the ballot this year. I spent a lot of extra time on this piece because I think so much is at stake with these elections, so I hope you check it out and pass it along to others. 

Oh, election season! The filing deadline for this year was Friday, May 8 at 5pm. In addition to the 5 state Supreme Court justice seats, all 98 state House seats and 24 of the 49 state Senate seats are up for grabs. 

Governor Bob Ferguson and Attorney General Nick Brown have filed a suit against The GEO Group, the private operator of the immigrant detention facility in Tacoma, and the GEO Group recently signed a six-month extension of their contract with ICE. I have a new piece covering this news, including concerning details about this new contract, that should be published any time now. 

Speaking of Ferguson, his tight rules on government agencies and departments’ communications with the press have led to delays on important communications to the public, such as bridge repair updates, public health vaccine guidelines, and the like. Agency officials have been repeatedly complaining about the impacts of these strict guidelines. 

The press also has less access to the Governor in general, with Ferguson holding fewer press conferences and general press availability periods. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Seattle looks to tighten its budget belt for 2027 Read More »

Seattle’s budget is precariously balanced, faces long-term problems

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Seattle News:

First off, we’re officially in budget season! Both Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed Seattle budget for 2026 and Executive Shannon Braddock’s proposed King County budget for 2026-2027 were introduced on Tuesday. 

I wrote an overview of the Seattle budget, which covers a lot of ground. Once again, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) was the clear winner, with the largest budgetary increase of any City department. 

And for those of you who remember that pesky budget deficit, Harrell managed to avoid having to make large cuts and layoffs by continuing to transfer the JumpStart payroll tax into the General Fund and getting behind two new revenue sources: the retool of the B&O tax championed by Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and a new 0.1% public safety sales tax. 

Harrell got very lucky in that the most recent city revenue forecast was decidedly better than the one earlier this year. He would have also been in trouble if it weren’t for Rinck’s B&O tax proposal, which explains why he got behind a new progressive revenue source for the first time in his mayoral term. 

However, that revenue forecast is very uncertain, and it’s quite possible the next forecast, due October 20, will be significantly worse. Happily for Harrell, that will be the city council’s problem and his hands will remain relatively clean for his reelection campaign. 

King County has already passed its own 0.1% public safety tax, which is singlehandedly saving the county from its own large deficit. 

Speaking of SPD, ICE is launching a new advertisement campaign to recruit Seattle law enforcement. They’re offering hiring bonuses and student loan forgiveness to entice candidates, while telling them they’ll be working to detain illegal immigrants who have committed crimes. However, here in Washington State, 60% of those currently in detention have no criminal record, while others have minor infringements only like traffic violations.

I dived into Seattle’s new AI Policy so you wouldn’t have to. Somehow I survived the many buzzwords and learned about the 42 AI pilots the City of Seattle has conducted so far. I covered several concerns, but I think one of the most interesting things I discovered is SPD’s potential interest in diving into the world of AI-generated predictive policing. 

Relatedly, PubliCola reported on an Office of Police Accountability (OPA) complaint from a community member who used an AI-detecting tool that found several public-facing communications from SPD (blog posts and a statement from the new police chief) appeared to be completely or partially written by AI. 

As I reported at The Urbanist, on October 8, the Seattle Public Schools school board is set to vote on whether Garfield High School will have a “Student Enforcement Officer” (SEO) pilot program this school year. They were supposed to vote on this pilot during their September meeting, but board director Joe Mizrahi asked for a postponement while he works on an amendment. 

Washington State News:

In July, Cascade PBS reported that Governor Bob Ferguson has the lowest six-month approval rating of any Washington State governor since 1993. 

And things aren’t slated to get any easier for Ferguson. Out this week, the most recent state revenue estimate has gotten worse. Revenues are expected to drop another $889 million over the next four years. Lawmakers will grapple to rebalance the state’s 2026 budget during the short legislative session early next year. 

Local Media:

Earlier this week, Seattle’s Cascade PBS station announced it’s laying off most of its newsroom staff and discontinuing production of local long-form journalism. This is a huge blow to local journalism in the Puget Sound area, and to be honest, I’m still reeling. You can donate to the laid off journalists here.

The cancellation of Cascade PBS’s local coverage comes the same year we’ve seen a large shift over at The Stranger, which appears to have changed its focus to covering local arts and culture at the expense of covering as much local news as in the past. Certainly from my perspective, as a local reporter covering the public safety beat, the sudden lack of a criminal justice reporter at The Stranger has left a huge void in what gets covered.

Mayoral candidate Katie Wilson has been promoting her Local News Dollars program that would provide public funding to small local media outlets, which gives me some hope for the future. But in the meantime, now would be a good time to donate to those outlets that still exist, including PubliCola, The Urbanist, the South Seattle Emerald, and Real Change. 

I suppose I should also mention that you can support Notes from the Emerald City and my work through my Patreon. 

Recent Headlines:

Seattle’s budget is precariously balanced, faces long-term problems Read More »

We’re thinking about the Seattle budget early this year

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Seattle News:

First off, we have some new revenue possibilities on the table for Seattle, one of which is progressive and one of which is decidedly not. 

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck introduced a B&O tax proposal that would bring in an additional $90 million of revenue every year. Should the city council pass the proposal, it will be brought before voters to decide this November. 

There have been some changes to the legislation since my reporting above. Most importantly, there will no longer be a specific spending plan that will be hammered out at the beginning of next year. Instead, the legislation outlines specific investment areas that are allowable uses for the new revenue being generated by the B&O tax restructure. Up to $30 million of the proceeds will be available to use to address potential federal funding reductions within specific categories, while the rest will be used to backfill certain investment areas within the general fund. 

You can take a look at the following presentations for more information:

One big thing to note from the first presentation: Last year, we forecast a 2027 budget deficit of $89 million. However, that number has gotten markedly worse and now stands at $233 million. That is for just 2027’s budget. Depending on how economic conditions develop, that number could continue to go up.

2025’s original deficit, dealt with during budget season last fall, stood around $250 million or so. Harrell chose to address it by reallocating JumpStart payroll tax proceeds away from its spending plan buckets to instead backfill the general fund. It is not clear whether that fix will work a second time to balance 2027’s budget, especially without largely eroding the intended JumpStart investments. 

Following the above presentations, Councilmember Bob Kettle stated he didn’t like how new revenue being passed is given buckets of investment areas for which it can be used. On Bluesky, I explained that often new revenue streams are dedicated to specific investment areas in order to avoid all new funding being used for purposes such as the police department, homeless sweeps, and pet projects of current electeds. Providing funding buckets focuses investment on urgent needs and/or long-term needs (such as affordable housing), meaning those investments don’t have to compete with other funding priorities. Especially with a voter-approved initiative, it’s important to give voters a clear idea of what investments they’re voting to support. 

Council President Sara Nelson also announced this week that should the council implement the state-allowed 0.1% “public safety” sales tax, up to 25% of the collected funds may be spent on “evidence-based treatment” for addiction. Don’t get too excited, though. Up to 25% is less than $9 million, and Nelson provides a long list of initiatives that she says the $9 million would support: a much longer list than $9 million could be realistically expected to pay for. 

PubliCola also expressed skepticism of the announcement, given that at the related press conference, Nelson was “flanked by a much larger contingent of allies from “treatment first” groups.”

Finally, a sales tax is a very regressive tax. We can already expect to see a sales tax increase of 0.2% in King County next year, and this would increase that to 0.3% within Seattle.

The Seattle Public Schools (SPS) school board met this week, but they decided not to take up their moratorium on police officers in Seattle public schools until later this summer. In the meantime, The Urbanist published an op-ed written by SPS students expressing the desire to keep police out of schools. 

The public safety committee heard again from SPD Chief Shon Barnes last week, followed by a full council vote on his confirmation as chief on Tuesday. 

The public safety committee also heard about new legislation that would fine graffiti taggers $1000 per piece of graffiti (Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison’s latest foray into policy making) and an amendment related legislation on chronic nuisance properties that would expand the CIty’s power to hold businesses responsible for illegal activities that don’t take place on their premises. You can read more about both of these pieces of legislation over at PubliCola.

The Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise (FEPP) levy will be on the ballot this November. In addition to the levy providing new investments in student mental health and school safety, which could include money going to SPD, PubliCola reported that the levy will shift funding for 30 programs that are currently supported by the general fund, the JumpStart payroll tax, and the sweetened beverage tax. This adds up to almost $50 million per year. Yikes! 

In the last edition, I reported about an AI pilot being tested by the City Budget Office and Central Staff. Last week we also heard about an AI pilot that began this spring to improve the City’s permitting process.

Lastly, ‘tis the season for endorsements, and The Stranger just came out with their Seattle mayoral endorsement for Katie Wilson. 

Upcoming local events:

There are several upcoming events in Seattle I’d like to call to your attention.

First, on Monday, July 7 at 7pm, there will be a crisis care center townhall at Vermillion to discuss the new proposed site of a crisis care center in Capitol Hill. 

Second, The Burner will be holding a candidate forum on Thursday, July 10 at 6:30pm at the First Baptist Church in Capitol Hill. Present will be three candidates for Seattle City Attorney, three of the four candidates for the City Council D2 seat, and three of the mayoral candidates, including the aforementioned Katie Wilson. 

The Stranger will be hosting their usual candidate forum on Thursday, July 24 at 7:30pm at Neumos. 

Finally, the Mayor’s Office will be hosting “Safer Seattle Community Forums” this summer in each council district, for which you need to RSVP to save a spot. District 2’s forum will be on Thursday, July 10, at Rainier Community Center from 6-7:30 PM. District 4’s forum will be at the Magnuson Community Center on July 15 from 6-7:30 PM. None of the other dates have been announced. 

WA State News:

The Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council released a new forecast, which estimates that WA State will have a $720 million budget deficit over the next four years. Governor Bob Ferguson said he doesn’t anticipate having to call a special legislative session in response to this news. 

“As we begin preparing to draft my first budget, OFM has already communicated to agencies that they need to look for additional savings,” Ferguson said. 

In other words, look for Ferguson to be pushing more austerity in the coming months. 

Recent Headlines:

We’re thinking about the Seattle budget early this year Read More »

Seattle City Council votes in favor of unavoidable advertising in public spaces and weakening their own ethics code

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Seattle News:

Let’s start by talking about a couple of my recent pieces. First, I covered SPD asking to obtain StarChase GPS surveillance technology. Noteworthy in this piece is the public safety committee meeting during which this technology was discussed, in which SPD Captain James Britt said he didn’t know something that would be very difficult not to know if you were in fact in charge of the project of obtaining the StarChase technology for SPD. 

Second, I covered the recent community safety town hall led by Councilmember Rob Saka to address gun violence in the High Point, Snake Hill, and North Delridge neighborhoods. Aside from no city official advocating for investment in gun violence prevention programs in these neighborhoods, there is also an open question about why it’s been taking Seattle City Light so long to repair streetlights in High Point compared to other, wealthier neighborhoods. 

Earlier this afternoon the Council met to discuss the proposal to weaken their ethics rules and the proposal to install advertising kiosks in several Seattle neighborhoods, including downtown, Ballard, and West Seattle. 

The advertising kiosk resolution passed its committee vote 5-0 (committee members are Councilmembers Nelson, Kettle, Hollingsworth, Rivera, and Solomon). 

The ethics legislation passed its committee vote with Rivera and Solomon voting in favor, and Nelson, Kettle, and Hollingsworth abstaining. It will receive a full council vote on Tuesday, June 3 at 2pm. 

Mayor Bruce Harrell has announced his intention to confirm SPD Chief Shon Barnes in his role as police chief, at the same time as Barnes published an op-ed in The Seattle Times about “Seattle-Centric policing.” 

Meanwhile SPD has just committed to spending almost $6 million for yet another ad recruitment campaign.

DivestSPD published an important look at falling crime in Seattle in 2024 and thus far in 2025. Here is a relevant excerpt:

“Crime was way down in 2024 and continues to fall in 2025. Most folks consider that a good thing — unless they’re operating a protection racket that manufactures consent for raises by scaring the public with sensational crime stories. SPOG has been so bereft of good material that it has resorted to using “This is Seattle” to comment on incidents in other cities. According to the Seattle crime dashboard, the violent and property crime rates in 2024 were both lower than in 2018, when SPD had 400 more officers. These trends are continuing in 2025.” 

In June, Seattle will be launching a new “ambassador” program in the CID similar to that already in place in downtown, funded by $500,000 from the city and $500,000 from the Asian American Foundation over two years, with three ambassadors patrolling the area from 2-10pm.

Harrell also announced Seattle’s “summer safety strategy,” which includes limiting many park hours from 4am to 10:30pm and installing a gate at the beloved Gas Works Park, as well as increasing SPD patrols.

There is controversy over King County’s proposal to site one of the five new crisis care centers in Capitol Hill on Broadway and Union. Many residents and businesses signed a letter opposing the location. The proposal should go in front of the King County Council sometime this summer for approval. 

Earlier this year, a King County inquest was held about the SPD killing of Iosia Faletogo at the end of 2018. Howard Gale wrote that this “marked the first time in history an inquest juror found that an SPD officer engaged in criminal conduct.” He also details the biases and confusion built into the county’s inquest process. 

The Urbanist also reported that Inspector General Lisa Judge, who runs Seattle’s Office of the Inspector General, appears to have been paying for private parking with City funds. 

WA State News:

In better news: in 2024, Washington State reported the largest decline in drug overdose deaths in almost a decade, a 12% drop from 2023. Even so, nearly 3,200 Washingtonians still died from an overdose in 2024. Nationwide, overdose deaths dropped 27%. 

Governor Bob Ferguson finally signed the state’s operating budget this week. Here is a list of his vetoes, which are much less extensive than feared but do include programs like a study comparing domestic violence intervention models, an association to coordinate opioid treatment and prevention services, a nonprofit that operates a teen case management and housing connections support program, and grants to entities that provide digital navigator services, devices, and subscriptions, among many others. These changes remove $25 million from the state’s budget, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the total being spent. 

Ferguson also signed the bill that requires Washingtonians to get a permit in order to buy a gun and a bill that gives unemployment benefits to striking workers.

Ferguson signed the bill providing $100 million for a grant program to hire more police officers. It allows the grant funds to be used for other purposes besides hiring more police, including peer counselors, behavioral health co-responders, crisis intervention training, and community assistance programs. 

The legislature did not address the crowding issue at Green Hill School juvenile detention center: “While a new facility opening this year in Aberdeen could offer some relief, the failure to pass significant legislation on the issue means Green Hill is on track to continue housing dozens more people than it is designed to safely hold.” 

Brian Heywood has filed five new state-wide initiatives this spring. He wants to limit annual property tax increases to 0.5% and for all property to be valued at 50 percent of its true and fair value in money and assessed on that basis; he wants more money for homeschooling and private schools at the cost of public education; he wants to ban trans girls from school sports; and he wants to restore the parents’ bill of rights that was amended during the legislative session. What a laundry list of conservative ideas!

Recent Headlines:

Seattle City Council votes in favor of unavoidable advertising in public spaces and weakening their own ethics code Read More »

We’re all waiting to find out exactly how austere the new WA state budget will be

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Seattle News:

Last week I dived into the recent Seattle Auditor’s Office report on gun violence patterns in Seattle for The Urbanist.

At the public safety committee meeting on April 8, Chief Innovation Officer Andrew Myerberg presented on the search for a new Office of Police Accountability (OPA) director. The search committee consists of Councilmember Bob Kettle, SPD Assistant Chief Tyrone Davis, CPC co-chair Joel Merkel, and Lisa Daugaard, the co-executive director of PDA. The first consideration date for candidates is today, 4/25, interviews of finalists will be all day 5/16, and meetings with stakeholders (the three police accountability bodies and SPD) will be on 5/22. 

Mayor Bruce Harrell expects to announce his hiring decision sometime in early June. As with the most recent police chief search, there is no public engagement scheduled around this hiring decision. 

There will be a special public safety committee meeting on Tuesday, April 29 to discuss Seattle’s police accountability system, including moving forward with the appointment of Eci Ameh as Executive Director of the Seattle Community Police Commission (CPC).

As has been previously reported by Guy Oron in Real Change, homeless encampment sweeps have escalated a large amount during Harrell’s tenure as mayor. And now The Seattle Times is even reporting on the story, writing, “To hide from the city’s escalating pace of encampment removals, homeless people say they are hiding deeper in the woods, where assaults, overdoses and emergencies can go unnoticed. Some say they’ve given up on setting up a tent altogether, leaving them less visible but more vulnerable to the elements and predators.”

Seattle has also lost 130 shelter spaces since 2022. Existing spaces are full (95%, which accounts for time spent in turnover). 

PubliCola reported that there have only been five SOAP orders issued since the law was passed more than seven months ago. Four of the five orders were against men who were indigent (making less than $24,000/year or showing they can’t afford an attorney). 

PubliCola also provides important context: “At a time of mass deportations and crackdowns on even legal immigrants, it’s also noteworthy that, according to public defenders, most of the men who get busted for patronizing street sex workers are immigrants. White men have more discreet ways of buying sex, and they’re more likely to be represented by private attorneys, rather than overworked public defenders.”

Meanwhile, in an Urbanist op-ed, Nathan Rouse, who is a candidate for Seattle City Attorney, comes out strong against cash bail for nonviolent misdemeanors. It’s worth reading what he has to say, and he includes many links for those interested in learning more. I’m curious what his opponents think about bail reform and whether this will be an issue on which the candidates differ. 

King County/WA State News:

My latest article is out at The Urbanist today, looking at the intersection between what’s going on with the state budget right now and how that will impact King County, with a particular focus on the bill that would have lifted the property tax revenue growth cap and the bill that would allow municipalities to raise the sales tax 0.1% as an additional “public safety” tax. 

In a letter delivered today, King County Councilmembers Girmay Zahilay and Rod Dembowski ask Executive Shannon Braddock to propose this new sales tax. Last I heard, neither councilmember had signed the letter to Ferguson asking for him to reconsider his resistance to the property tax cap lift. 

It should be an exciting few days in Olympia as this legislative session is slated to end this Sunday, April 27. A few news tidbits in the meantime: the bill to create a permit-to-purchase program for guns has been passed by both chambers and will become law if Ferguson signs it. It looks like the Senate might be creating the wealth tax “test balloon” that Ferguson indicated might be acceptable to him. And Senate Democrats have proposed a 55% cut to abortion access funding in the state, right at a time when medical agencies providing these services are under severe attack from the federal government. The House Democrats have preserved this funding, and we’ll find out soon if they prevail in this matter. 

King County’s 2024 Point in Time Count was released this week, saying 16,868 people experienced homelessness on any given night in 2024. This is 26% higher than in 2022. Homelessness continues to disproportionately affect communities of color, including Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic people. 

There are more than two people per every shelter space in King County, and in North King County, this number is much worse at 9.6 people per bed. You can read more about it at PubliCola.

Meanwhile, PubliCola also reported that the current state budget cuts funds for former Governor Jay Inslee’s right-of-way program, which resolves encampments on state-owned rights of way through extensive outreach. 

National News:

Jeff Asher, a nationally recognized crime data analyst, released an essay announcing that crime is down down down. His own words: “All we can say with certainty is that major crime — as counted by the FBI — almost certainly declined quite a lot in the first quarter of 2025. These would be record levels of decline for most crime types if they held up for the full year.”

I’ll add my usual disclaimer about taking crime data with at least some salt.

Recent Headlines:

 

We’re all waiting to find out exactly how austere the new WA state budget will be Read More »

Crime falls in Seattle in spite of SPD’s “organizational weaknesses”

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Seattle News:

First up, I had a new article out this week that covers continuing local developments from the Trump administration. I wrote about how both King County and Seattle are impacted, how various decisions from the Trump administration and Congress are likely to cause more homelessness, less affordable housing, and fewer services for those who are unhoused, and the worsening situation for unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children who lack legal representation when they face ICE in the courtroom. 

We’re also seeing eviction rates in King County skyrocket. KUOW reported that the King County Sheriff’s Office received 702 eviction orders this March, as compared to 317 eviction orders received in March of 2024. For 2025 so far, there has been a 30% increase from last year’s rate. 

Even though SPD only managed to hire a net ONE officer in 2024 (a gain that was immediately erased when former Chief Sue Rahr decided to fire Officer Kevin Dave on January 6), Danny Westneat reports that crime is “plummeting,” citing the following stats:

  • Shots fired YTD down 24%
  • Violent crime YTD down 15%, its lowest quarter for five years
  • 8 homicides through the end of March, the lowest figure since 2019
  • Car theft is down 30% from a year ago and 50% down from its peak

Looks like police department staffing really doesn’t have much to do with crime rates. 

Speaking of SPD, the OPA has recommended they institute an AI policy after one of their officers used ChatGPT and other AI tools to write his reports. SPD COO Brian Maxey made it into the news again this week. And SPD Captain Eric Greening reportedly settled his discrimination lawsuit with the City for around $1 million.

Seattle received its April revenue forecast yesterday, and the news is bleak. The revenue forecast council adopted the pessimistic forecast, given all the turmoil being caused by the Trump administration and Elon Musk. The total revenue forecast for 2025-2026 has been lowered by $241 million. This does not include the loss of $46.8 million of expected JumpStart revenue from 2024 (the tax only brought in $360 million in 2024 after being predicted to bring in $406.8 million). 

Seattle will need to make up that $241 million + $46.8 million gap this year during their mid-year supplemental budget process and their fall budget season. The revenue forecast could continue to grow worse during this time. And let’s not forget Seattle has already been projected to face an additional $78 million deficit for 2027, a number we can also expect to grow larger. 

It is really hard for me to emphasize enough how much trouble all of these budgets are in, from the Washington State budget to the King County budget to Seattle’s budget. They were already in deep trouble before any federal cuts, but the federal cuts will undoubtedly exacerbate the situation. Without significant new revenue sources, the current level of public services enjoyed in these localities is unsustainable.

That being said, it will be difficult for Seattle to pass enough new revenue sources, and especially to get them up and collecting quickly enough, to meaningfully address the problem. Thus far the city council has shown itself to be recalcitrant when it comes to passing any new revenue sources, but it remains to be seen whether this latest downturn will change any minds. 

One possible solution would be to move all JumpStart funds away from their originally intended purpose (affordable housing, Green New Deal, and equitable development) and plug it all into the General Fund. However, given what we know about how the Trump administration is already negatively impacting affordable housing projects and homelessness services, as well as how recessions generally further increase the unhoused population, pulling further large investments from affordable housing would almost certainly have disastrous consequences. Similarly, the longer the City postpones dealing materially with the climate catastrophe, the worse the fallout will be, and the less the City invests in addressing historical disparities, the more those inequities will continue to compound. 

Local journalist Guy Oron continues his reporting about homeless sweeps in Seattle, finding that the number of sweeps in 2024 was even higher than the record set in 2023 – there were 2,504 sweeps in 2024 and 2,205 sweeps in 2023. The vast majority of these sweeps were done without prior notice. 

Harrell clocks in with 5,633 sweeps performed during his three years and three months in office, by far the highest number of any Seattle mayor since at least 2008. Former mayor Jenny Durkan oversaw 1,781 sweeps during her four-year term, the second highest number. 

For the 2025-2026 biennium, the Unified Care Team that performs these sweeps is slated to get $66 million, a bump from their previous 2023-2024 budget of $52.5 million. 

Over the last year, at least 15 defendants at Seattle Municipal Court (SMC) have not been assigned public defenders to receive the defense services to which they are legally entitled. This particular issue does not seem to be resulting from the public defense crisis currently hitting the state, but rather seems to be due to errors on the side of SMC. Public defenders suspect this problem might be resulting from the Court’s expensive new case management system that originally rolled out a year ago and has been plagued by issues.

The Office of the City Auditor recently released a report on gun violence patterns in Seattle and then delivered a presentation about it to the council’s governance committee last week, which became unexpectedly heated when Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington appeared to feel attacked and disrespected by both the report and the process by which it came into existence. 

Politics aside, it’s an enlightening report that the Mayor’s Office doesn’t appear to have much interest in engaging with. It references a report delivered by the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy (CEBCP) to SPD in June of 2023, saying, “The report found that SPD does not follow many best practices for “investigative effectiveness” and that “even if the SPD returns to full personnel capacity, these organizational weaknesses will continue if unattended.”

The auditor’s report lists six specific weaknesses of SPD investigations found by the CEBCP and references SPD’s lack of public legitimacy as an ongoing issue. No one at the council meeting on this subject explicitly brought any of this up, however. 

WA State News:

The Washington State budget continues to wend its way forward. Governor Bob Ferguson’s budget director sent a letter to legislative budget leaders underlining his priorities. The letter underlines Ferguson’s desire to maintain strong reserves and acknowledges that “meaningful reductions alone will not fully address the budget shortfall.” It says new revenue sources should be “thoughtfully considered” but makes it clear that Ferguson remains opposed to the wealth tax, which is “untested in court.” 

More surprisingly, the letter goes on to list more than two dozen policies and programs that Ferguson would like to see receive more funding and attention. As the Washington State Standard reported, “Budget writers said this week that the level of granular detail in the letter didn’t surprise them. But the absence of advice from the governor on where they could make a bigger dent in addressing a multibillion-dollar shortfall did.”

What the letter does NOT do is give any specific advice about either cuts or new sources of revenue that Ferguson would support. 

The state’s capital budget proposals include more money for affordable housing compared to the last biennium, with the House proposal including almost $724 million for housing and the Senate proposal including $770 million.  

Meanwhile, hundreds of Washington state workers, who have been threatened with varying furlough plans by both Ferguson and the Senate, protested at Olympia on Wednesday. It’s possible that Washington State Federation of State Employees (WFSE) workers might strike over the proposal.

Recent Headlines:

 

Crime falls in Seattle in spite of SPD’s “organizational weaknesses” Read More »

Turmoil continues at SPD; WA State legislators search for new revenue to bridge a huge deficit

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Seattle News:

First of all, my interview with Seattle City Attorney candidate Erika Evans is now out. This race is shaping up to be very competitive, with three candidates challenging incumbent Ann Davison. I think one of the big challenges of the race will be for the three candidates, who are united in their criticism of Davison, to distinguish themselves from one another. 

I also had a piece out about SPD and an email that recently came to light. In mid-January, SPD COO Brian Maxey wrote to the head of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, calling the department “increasingly unstable” and referencing “chaos.” I also take a look at all the recent lawsuits coming out of SPD and how SPD complaint systems are potentially being weaponized.

The revenue report for the end of 2024 was released this week, and it contained bad news about the JumpStart payroll expense tax, which collected $47 million less in 2024 than forecasts had predicted. It is important to note, however, that the tax still brought in more money in 2024 than it did in 2023 (by $45 million.) 

This underscores the dangers of using the JumpStart tax to backfill the general fund as opposed to using it to fund affordable housing, investments which can more easily be adjusted to match whatever revenues are produced by this more volatile funding source.  

Last week, Councilmember Cathy Moore decided to direct $1 million in City funding for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation to The More We Love, bypassing a competitive bidding process that had been expected by other providers in the region.

As PubliCola reports, “Representatives from existing Black-led groups that work with survivors said that by giving $1 million to a white-led group that has not previously held a contract to work with CSE survivors, the city is ignoring and undermining the expertise of organizations that focus on Black and brown survivors, who make up a disproportionate number of people in the commercial sex trade.”

And also, “Many of the organizational leaders who spoke to PubliCola said they felt the city had not only wasted their time but violated their trust.”

Finally, Councilmember Rob Saka’s resolution denouncing the defund movement passed a full council vote this week. Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Cathy Moore, and Dan Strauss were not present for the vote. 

In order to clear up any confusion, this ordinance was not necessary to end Seattle’s consent decree. In addition, it does not provide a complete assessment of all the reasons behind SPD’s attrition in recent years, which mirrors that of other police departments across the country. DivestSPD brought up the point that many police officers hired in the 1990s by COPS grants started reaching retirement age in the past ten years. In addition, some officers left due to Covid vaccine mandates. 

PubliCola does an excellent job covering some of what was said about this ordinance on Tuesday.

That this resolution would be a top matter of council business over the last few weeks appears to demonstrate a lack of urgency on the part of certain councilmembers when it comes to the rolling impacts of federal-level decisions made during that same time period. 

Next week I’ll be covering the latest news of local impacts due to the decisions of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. This week, committees from both the King County Council and the Seattle City Council received more information about what’s happening on the ground right now. 

King County News:

As one of his last acts as King County Executive, Dow Constantine nominated Matt Sanders, who is currently acting as the interim director of the King County Department of Public Defense, to continue as the permanent director. The King County Council will vote on whether to confirm this nomination sometime in the next few months. 

SEIU 925, the union that represents public defenders and other legal professionals in the department, opposes this nomination, PubliCola reported. PubliCola writes: “Rank and file union members have expressed concerns about Sanders, saying his management style has contributed to low morale and high turnover at the agency.” 

The union prefers Snohomish County public defense department director Jason Schwartz for the position.

This week the King County Council appointed Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock to serve as acting County Executive following the departure of Dow Constantine for Sound Transit. Braddock indicated interest in AI implementation during her brief tenure as County Executive, even though this is a policy area about which she said, “I am not a technology expert. I don’t know these things.” 

Another death has been reported at the SCORE jail this week, marking at least 11 deaths that have taken place inside the jail in a 2-year period. PubliCola has been untiring in its coverage of this local deadly jail, even though “Rivera was the only one of 45 city leaders from the six cities that own SCORE who agreed to speak to PubliCola about conditions at the jail.” (Rivera is a councilmember from Renton.) 

As Andy Engelson, the reporter covering this story, told me on Bluesky, “The only time SCORE has answered questions from one of the 6 cities that own it, there were just 12 minutes for questions and no time for public comment.” 

WA State News:

Yesterday I had a piece out that covers the discussions around the state’s operating budget, which will need to be finalized before the end of the month. There are many progressive revenue options on the table for the House and Senate to discuss. Complicating matters, Governor Bob Ferguson has indicated he will veto any budget that implements the so-called “wealth tax” or that doesn’t have $100 million over two years for police hiring grants. 

Apparently state Democrats are now looking for alternate taxes to make up the difference in revenue that would have been provided by a new wealth tax. Options include other business taxes and changing the capital gains tax. Many of the taxes under discussion, however, bring in relatively small amounts of revenue compared to the wealth tax, which was estimated to provide between $2.4 and $4 billion annually beginning in fiscal year 2027. 

The state legislative session is scheduled to end on April 27.

Recent Headlines:

Turmoil continues at SPD; WA State legislators search for new revenue to bridge a huge deficit Read More »

Toxic work environments reported at both the Washington governor’s office and the Seattle mayor’s office

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Seattle News:

First off, let’s catch up on last week’s public safety committee meeting, which featured a presentation about the CARE alternative response team from CARE Chief Amy Barden. 

As of last week, the CARE teams are responding city-wide, 10 hours a day, seven days a week. Thus far they have answered 1,648 calls, of which 30-40% is giving someone a ride. Barden mentioned that the CARE department, which currently consists of the CARE alternative responders and 911 dispatch, needs more administrative support in order to grow. 

However, CARE is currently limited by the SPOG MOU to an upper limit of 24 responders, which is not enough to meet the current demand of calls, let alone an expansion that would grant more coverage across the city 24/7. HB 1816, which I reported on last month, might have rectified this issue, but unfortunately it didn’t receive a floor vote last week so is effectively dead. 

It is unclear to me if the previous MOU with SPOG has done enough to establish the CARE team’s body of work for them to expand without further bargaining, as I have heard different answers to this question, which hinges on how the MOU is interpreted.

 It is also unclear to me if there is any other avenue beyond further bargaining with SPOG to move the CARE team away from dual dispatch so they’re able to respond to calls without police being present. It is very clear at this point that doing so would be safe (a fact we already knew from the data from alternative response teams doing similar work in other cities). Barden says some SPD sergeants feel comfortable clearing CARE teams to answer calls alone over radio channels, while others do not. 

Barden is adamant that public safety in Seattle would improve if she were able to send the best first response. At the council meeting, she cited the NICJR report on 911 calls in Seattle, saying that the study said 80% of calls had nothing to do with criminal behavior or law enforcement and that only 6% of calls had some kind of criminal implication. She also emphasized how much money the City would save by dispatching the CARE teams more often.

Some councilmembers were very critical of Barden’s efforts thus far, saying she isn’t doing enough. They didn’t all seem cognizant of the barriers erected by the SPOG MOU, in spite of the fact that several journalists have covered this issue, and at some length. 

Some councilmembers seemed to be unaware that many services have been perennially underfunded and not scaled up to the level of need. Happily, PubliCola covered this, writing, “One thing Barden didn’t bring up explicitly is that the CARE Team can only refer to services that are available, and that those services—including long-term treatment, case management, housing, and even basic detox—are not as ample and widely available as council members repeatedly suggested. Nor is it a great use of resources to send people through inadequate light-touch services again and again, Barden noted.”

Councilmember Martiza Rivera asked why Barden hasn’t taken on the role of coordinating services for folks in need, including with community-based organizations, which she said is directly in the CARE department mandate. Barden said that Senior Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess hasn’t given her license to take on that aspect of the department’s work yet because he thinks she lacks capacity. 

Two more interesting things of note from this meeting: Barden said SPD put together a work group last year to reassign call types. The results of this work are that in February of 2025, 911 received 50% fewer Priority 1 calls than in February of 2024. 

Secondly, Councilmember Cathy Moore, who was perhaps the most adamant in repeating how many services are already available for people in need, stated her interest in increasing involuntary confinement. “Your civil liberties do you no good if you’re dead,” Moore said.

I hope that, especially in these times, we can see the dangerous slippery slope to which that argument leads. I have written before about how when it comes to people’s rights around involuntary confinement in Washington State, amendments have chipped away at the original robust law, making it easier to force involuntary treatment on vulnerable people. And at a time when Americans’ civil rights are under direct and robust attack, Moore’s words perhaps do not land the way she intended. 

The Mayor’s Office held a press conference this week to celebrate the expansion of the CARE teams city-wide.

In other news, there has been a second SODA order issued, this time in the CID. However, Davison says there have actually been three SODA orders and one pending SOAP order. She says the reason these aren’t being used more often is a combination of police officer training taking time and judges not granting these orders as part of their rulings.

Late last Friday, KUOW broke the news of former Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell, also the niece of Mayor Bruce Harrell, speaking out about the toxic working environment of the Mayor’s Office. As KUOW reported, “She describes the mayor’s office as being a dog-eat-dog environment where white male advisors vied for power and influence. She said her experience, as a high-level woman ignored by the mayor and his lieutenants, is not unique at City Hall.”

The article continues, “KUOW spoke with six other women with ties to the mayor’s office who supported Monisha Harrell’s account of a boys’ club environment where women were condescended to and shut out of important meetings, even though their roles would suggest they be included.”

Tying into the above story, PubliCola reported on several women who have decided to come forward in the wake of a mayoral staffer being accused of sexual assault. The King County Prosecutor’s Office has not yet made a charging decision in this case, but several women have come forward to tell their own stories about their interactions with former external affairs director Pedro Gomez, which appear to illustrate a pattern of behavior that involves Gomez making promises to help women professionally while bragging about his influence, plying them with large amounts of alcohol that they feel pressured to accept, and then making sexual advances and/or trying to get them to a private location. 

It is worthwhile to read both of the above articles in their entirety. 

Washington State News:

Washington State Senate and House Democrats plan to release their budget proposals on Monday, March 24. 

The news from this week’s updated state revenue estimate was not good. While the state is expected to bring in $54.4 million more than expected in the 2023-2025 biennium, it is expected to bring in almost $900 million less in 2025-2029, leading to a total further deficit of $845 million. This is on top of the already existing deficit that Governor Bob Ferguson most recently estimated at $15 billion over the next four years. 

Senate Democrat budget leaders just released their 2025 revenue proposal, which is admirably ambitious, given the scope of financial problems confronting the state. I will be writing at more length about this soon, but in addition to one version of a wealth tax and a state-level Jumpstart-like tax, the package does include lifting the 1% annual cap from property tax increases, which would give King County a fighting chance to eventually recover from their current tough budget situation. 

Meanwhile, Ferguson’s office has been undergoing quite a shakeup. Last week, his legislative director Joyce Bruce quit, following the recent resignation of his deputy legislative director Shawn Lewis, which raised troubling questions about the working environment at the governor’s office and left it short-staffed in the middle of a challenging legislative session. 

This week, top Ferguson aide Mike Webb, who had worked for Ferguson since at least 2012, resigned with this statement: “I deeply regret that the allegations of a hostile work environment have created an unhelpful distraction that impacts the team’s ability to do their work, as well as my ability to be effective in the near term. To be blunt, given the stakes of the work ahead, I cannot stomach that.”

Ferguson is expected to retool his administration in the wake of these resignations, and some state lawmakers are hoping for a re-set. 

Ferguson is also garnering criticism from state workers over his proposal to furlough government workers one day a month to save money. However, it is unlikely that state Democrats would support this proposal. 

Finally, if you’re wondering why universal health care for Washington State is not on the agenda for this legislative session, The Stranger writes about what happened to the proposed bills. 

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Election Season: 

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Cities that own SCORE jail seem uninterested in accountability or improvement

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SCORE Jail:

PubliCola has continued its crucial coverage of the terrible conditions at the local SCORE jail in Des Moines. 11 people held in the jail have now died over the past two years, which is a shockingly high number. The jail has been reported to have inadequate medical care, filthy conditions, and contemptuous staff. 

The jail is owned and operated by six local cities–Auburn, Burien, Des Moines, Renton, SeaTac, and Tukwila–and it has contracts with many more local cities, including Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Shoreline, Kenmore, Federal Way, and more. The jail is run by an executive director who reports to an administrative board with representatives from the six cities. 

The most recent board meeting was this past Wednesday, when the executive director called PubliCola’s recent reporting “misinformation.” The board didn’t ask the executive director anything about the conditions and facts reported in the article nor showed any interest in accountability or improving conditions inside this deadly facility. 

If you live in one of the six cities that operates the jail, here is a document with talking points and contact information.

Seattle News:

I sat down last week with Seattle City Attorney candidate and current public defender Nathan Rouse, and we had a long talk about his road in deciding to run and his vision for the Seattle City Attorney’s office. 

Real Change ran an op-ed by David Stoesz this week, entitled “Facts and evidence are our greatest strength: A response to Katie Wilson.” He makes some compelling arguments, and he also provides a nugget of information I think is important to emphasize. 

While discussing how in addition to housing, some folks are also in need of wrap-around services, Stoesz says that Plymouth Housing has calculated that one year of assisted living with the highest level of service costs the same as three days at Harborview or three months at the King County Jail. (King County Councilmember Sarah Perry said at a meeting this past Tuesday that a night at the King County Jail costs $250 per night.) 

While there are plenty of other evidence-based reasons why housing first and providing services to folks is smart policy, in this time of looming governmental budget deficits, remembering the relative cost of these policies is also useful. 

The City Attorney’s Office has slightly relaxed their blanket affidavits of prejudice against sitting Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi, who is now able to oversee some criminal cases. However, the Office still filed several affidavits of prejudice against her last week for DUI and domestic violence cases, and her primary assignment remains in infractions, as she does not yet have enough criminal cases for a full courtroom calendar. 

New interim SPD Chief Shon Barnes presented to the city council’s public safety committee for the first time on Tuesday. I’ll be reporting more on that meeting soon. 

Seattle awarded $22 million through its Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) in January. Projects funded include: “Africatown Community Land Trust (completing the Africatown Plaza development), Cham Refugees Community (completing a Cham community center), Rainier Beach Action Coalition (completion of the Food Innovation Center), the Somali Health Board (assisting construction of the Somali Community Cultural Innovation Hub), and Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network.”

WA State News:

The fiscal committee cut-off for bills this legislative session is TODAY, so soon I’ll be going through a bunch of interesting bills to see if they survived. I can already tell you that the Traffic Safety for All bill has unfortunately died. 

Yesterday Governor Bob Ferguson proposed $4 billion in state budget cuts. These cuts, combined with those proposed by former Governor Jay Inslee before his departure, would add up to $7 billion of a budget gap Ferguson is now estimating will be $15 billion over the next four years. 

Part of his plan involves state workers taking one unpaid day off per month. These furloughs would begin in July and save the state $300 million. He also wants to cut funding to food banks, which, given the combination of potential federal cuts to the SNAP food assistance program and the much higher demand on food banks since the pandemic began in 2020, seems potentially disastrous. 

Ferguson says it’s still too soon to say whether he’ll support state tax increases, which seems strange, given that were his cuts to be adopted, they still only address half of the state’s four-year budget deficit. There is also no word on how he is considering dealing with any federal fund cuts. Again, Washington State received $27 billion from the federal government in fiscal year 2024. 

In Praise:

I highly recommend reading author and organizer Kelly Hayes’s most recent piece, How to be a Fighter When You Feel Like a Punching Bag. It is long so you will need to put aside some time to read it (or there is also a listening option!), but I found it incredibly valuable and think it is worth your time. 

Among other topics, it covers:

  • Agency, trauma, learned helplessness, and feeling stuck/frozen in the current onslaught
  • The impact of social media, the bubbles it often relegates us to and how that encourages despair, isolation, and misanthropy, and the necessity for trust in order to organize collective action
  • The necessity of building social skills and relationships to meet this moment, as well as the importance of community
  • A key quote in the piece from Aaron Goggans: “Every time Musk or Trump weaponizes cruelty to shock a group into compliance we have to show, not with our outrage but with our care, that another response is possible.”
  • The strategy of taking small steps of agency and thinking about what activities/routines you can add to your life that are aligned with your values and keep you more informed and connected.

I hope you all find this piece to be as inspiring and helpful as I did. 

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Seattle is the only large city in the US that hasn’t had a homicide in 2025

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Seattle News:

Seattle is the only large American city that has not yet experienced a homicide this year. 

There was a public safety committee meeting on Tuesday where councilmembers discussed the new less lethal weapons legislation. I wrote about that meeting for The Urbanist. Warning: at times it got rather colorful!

Today, the Council narrowed down the list of candidates for the open D2 council seat from 20 applicants to 6 finalists: Chukundi Salisbury, Mark Solomon, Adonis Ducksworth, Thaddaeus Gregory, Edward Lin, and Hong Chhuor. There will be a public forum for these finalists on Tuesday, January 21 at 5:30pm at Columbia City Theater, hosted by Seattle CityClub. Current councilmembers will make their final selection on Monday, January 27. 

Pedro Gomez, who served as Mayor Bruce Harrell’s director of external affairs, has resigned after facing rape allegations from someone with whom he was having an after-hours business meeting. Marcus Harrison Green interviewed the woman pressing charges who was torn between her views as a prison abolitionist and her desire to protect her community and hold Gomez accountable.

This week PubliCola followed up on the 30×30 pledge made by SPD to have 30% of their sworn staff be women by 2030. In 2024 86% of the 84 new officers hired were men, a number reflective of gender breakdown in applicants more generally.

PubliCola also reported that Kevin Dave, the SPD officer who was fired last week, two years after hitting and killing Jaahnavi Kandula, has appealed his firing. The Public Safety Civil Service Commission held an initial hearing on this appeal on January 16, but the case could take a long time to be decided.

King County News:

King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay was just unanimously chosen by his fellow councilmembers to be the Chair of the King County Council. He is also running for the County Executive position in November, as is fellow Councilmember Claudia Balducci. 

King County Council has a vacancy due to Dave Upthegrove’s recent election to Public Lands Commissioner. Councilmembers will have to select someone to fill Upthegrove’s spot, and committee assignments are expected to be made in February. 

WA State News:

Last week I went down to Olympia for a special media event before the legislative session began this Monday, January 13, which I found very enlightening. As a result, I wrote a piece for The Urbanist: Ferguson Pushes Budget Cuts as Washington Legislature Seeks New Revenue. 

As my readers doubtless know, I cover Seattle’s budget season in some detail every year, and I was pleased to be able to apply some of that budget knowledge to understanding what’s going on with the state’s budget right now. I posted on Bluesky that the state budget that gets passed this year will have reverberations for years to come. We’re still experiencing consequences from the austerity practiced at the state level from the Great Recession, so that gives you an idea of how impactful lawmakers’ choices are this year: how much and where will they cut, what programs will they delay (and what will their plan be for making sure the delay isn’t permanent?), and will they pass new revenue options to help ease the difficulty? 

Even the legislature’s decision as to whether to raise the property tax cap for local municipalities (cities and counties) will have strong ripple effects either way, as King County, for example, continues to struggle with its budget as its revenues have had no way to keep up with expenditures due to the high inflation a few years ago. 

On Wednesday, our new governor, Bob Ferguson, gave his inaugural address, which seems to have made Republicans happier than Democrats. You can read a recent interview with Ferguson here. Ferugson also signed three executive orders on his first day: one to work to protect reproductive rights in Washington and two related to housing regulations and permitting. 

Nick Brown, the new Attorney General taking over the office from Ferguson, is unhappy about the cuts Ferguson has said he wants the office to make. The Seattle Times reported that Ferguson protected the office’s funds while he was Attorney General but as governor has changed his tune. Brown opposes the cut, saying it will impact the office’s ability to take on civil rights and anti-trust cases.

In Praise:

I was thinking over the winter vacation about how to incorporate joy, hope, and a positive vision into the work I do. For those of you who know me personally, it will come as no surprise that these are part of my daily project of living, and yet it is also true that in my journalism work, I am most often covering very serious topics that can be emotionally taxing and discouraging to engage with. 

I also think that political thought does not need to be inherently bleak and depressing, a statement which I realize is especially bold on this particular weekend. But perhaps it is more important now than ever to remember this. 

For an example, I offer up the novel I’ve been working on for the past year, the second in the Satori Chronicles series, entitled Stars, Hide Your Fires. The first novel in that series was distinctly a dystopia, but this new one is not. This new one imagines how a society could be better: not perfect, not a utopia. Indeed, one of the main themes of the book is that societies cannot be static and perfect but must be continually invested into and engaged with or risk falling into complacency and potential injustice. But better. 

In the process of writing this novel, I’ve realized that what seems on the surface to be a simple act–to imagine a world that is a bit better than this one or the dystopia portrayed in the first book–can feel subversive. It was, it turns out, not always easy to imagine such a world and how to set an interesting story within it. It was certainly more difficult than following the tried and true path of the dystopia. In spite of its challenges, it has been a rewarding experiment, trying to create this more positive vision. 

In that spirit, I am experimenting with adding this “In Praise” section to the newsletter. I have been waffling about it, not wanting to create more work for myself, but this morning I was reading Orwell’s Roses, a book by Rebecca Solnit, and I came across this quotation from George Orwell and realized I’d made up my mind:

“A correspondent reproaches me with being ‘negative’ and ‘always attacking things.’ The fact is that we live in a time when causes for rejoicing are not numerous. But I like praising things, when there is anything to praise, and I would like here to write a few lines–they have to be retrospective, unfortunately–in praise of the Woolworth’s Rose.”

What a wonderful thing to publish in a column! Orwell wrote this at the beginning of 1944. Now here, at the beginning of 2025, some of us might also feel like the causes for rejoicing may not be numerous. But that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to take some time to appreciate the roses. 

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