Good morning.
I'm your host Lenny Orlov with
Seattle Human Services. Today's virtual Civic
coffee hour is presented in partnership with the Seattle
Public Library as a way to encourage
civic engagement among older adults in Seattle
Today, on the Civic coffee hour, we will hear from Seattle
Mayor Jenny Durkan following the mayor's
remarks Anthony Derrick, Digital Advisor in the mayor's office
will collect some of the questions from the online
Q&A and present them to Mayor Durkan.
We will conclude with additional resources and upcoming events.
To introduce.
Mayor Durkan Let me welcome Jason
Johnson, interim director
of Seattle Human Services.
Jason.
Welcome to the show. Please remember to mute
your microphone you are alive on the
Civic coffee hour.
Great Lenny, thank you
so much and special thanks to the Age
friendly Seattle team for making today's coffee
hour possible. Good morning and thanks to all of
you for joining us today. My name is Jason Johnson and I have the
great honor to serve as director of the Human Services Department
for the city of Seattle. It's truly my pleasure to
join you today. The Human Services Department mission is to connect people
with resources and solutions during times of need so
that we all can live.
Learn, work and take part in a strong, healthy
safe driving community.
It is wonderful to work everyday
with a dedicated team of human service professionals
and also in close partnership with the mayor who is
has a strong commitment to human
Services and the human service department's goals.
The Civic happy hours. One way that the
Human Services Department helps to connect people
have grown each month and thanks to modern
technology, this virtual format has allowed us
to offer not only closed captioning in English, but
viewers as Lenny stated, have a choice of
six additional languages before we get started. I
wanted to just offer a special thanks to
Seattle Public Library for partnering with
the Human Services Department and the age friendly Seattle team.
This year on programs that help older
people learn about city programs and services
The library always has been a place people could count on
to get answers to questions, including phone, email
and online chat with a librarian which are especially
critical these days. While library branches are closed.
Library books and materials are available through
curbside service and the library offers amazing online
resources, including upcoming classes on Medicare
You can visit spl.org
For more information and thank you again to the
Seattle Public Library for your partnership.
And now it's my pleasure to introduce
today's special guest Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan
I'm honored to work closely with Mayor Durkan. A true
human service champion on important issues across
our city that helped to prepare youth for
success, support, affordability, and livability address
homelessness, promote public health, community safety
and promote healthy aging through
through support services for seniors and people living with disabilities.
I'm especially grateful for her leadership
in increasing and targeting investments through the
Human Services Department that help change racial disparities
in Seattle and support and lift up
black indigenous and people of color across our city
and the region.
Mayor Durkan was elected the 56 mayor
of Seattle in 2017
becoming the city's first female mayor in nearly a
century, and only its second openly LGBTQ elected
mayor. If we were all able to applaud, I would ask for
you to do that now. Please join me and
welcoming Mayor Jenny Durkan.
And mayor, my apologies, you're muted.
People been trying to mute me all week.
So thank you, Jason for the introduction thanks to the
e team, I really am very pleased to be
here. I'm very sorry that this is virtual I
I think one of the hardest thing about this
pandemic is the way that it has for so many of us into
isolation. An broken apart. Some of those really important
civic bonds and human bonds we have with one another
that I am drinking my coffee with you, but
cannot wait until we can actually.
Meet in the same room
together. I really want to thank you to Jason and your team for
all the work you've been doing, not just in the three years that
I've been mayor. But during this pandemic and
over the last many months it has been.
Truly the most difficult time our city has
ever faced. We are in the midst of Global
al pandemic. We were one of the first in the nation to enter
it. We had not only no help from our federal government
but they seem to be working against our ability
to fight the pandemic and we took
k some bold steps early on to stop the spread
of the virus because the only thing we could do to stop
the spread of the virus was to make sure we didn't have contact
with one another.
But with that came some
significant problems and issues. The first was it has
created more and more isolation for people, particularly for those
who are seniors.
The second is it showed us right
away that by shutting down our economy, the
that there was huge economic devastation for
people. Both the health impacts and the
economic impacts of the pandemic.
Have landed very disproportionately
on our communities of color and on our seniors.
We have seen that the
people who suffered in the earliest days were
disproportionately those who were seniors and aging.
But as the pandemic continued, we saw
that it's skewed, so that are Latin X community in our black
community have been disproportionately impacted by the health
impacts.
That's true of the economic impacts as
well because we are a city that already had such disparity
in our access to economic opportunity
and the jobs where people could work from home.
We saw 55,000 people immediately
leave the center core, but many people couldn't work from home
because the jobs they had required them to show up others
s were essential workers and in those groups of people
they were disproportionately people of color and people who
were service workers or who are not having the
same economic prosperity in our city.
So in this backdrop we saw
immediately the disparities we saw before the
pandemic were even more stark and against that
t backdrop we then saw George Floyd murder
in Minnesota, which ignited a civil
rights and racial reckoning in our country.
That we are in the midst of, and it is called me
as mayor Ann our whole city to really acknowledge and recognize.
The existence of systemic
racism and its impact on each of the institutions that
we have, whether it's policing or
education access to all opportunity and so
so in the last months we have had to change
how we govern. Most of Seattle workers were working from
home, many who could not work from home
were in the field, but we're vulnerable, were home on covid
relief. And so we have changed how we had
our operating. We learn very quickly that the programs we had in place that we thought would.
Build the resilience for our community.
Had not anticipated a crisis of this magnitude
or type. For example, we had regularly
supported.
Our seniors and those who
were approaching older age like
myself with a whole range of programs, but many of those
programs required people coming together. Whether is it senior centers or
programming itself, suddenly those gatherings couldn't happen, but
they weren't just gatherings. For many people, it was the sole
meal that they could have, so we suddenly had to stand up the ability
to deliver meals to people at their homes
to make sure that school children who couldn't go to school.
Also didn't miss their meals and that their families
had access to childcare so that their parents, if they had
to work, could work. The work of government changed
almost overnight. We now are providing
grocery vouchers to almost 14,000 families
in the city of Seattle, but we have city workers who have
helped man food banks. We've had to change the
whole way we deliver services to get us through this
pandemic because your lives have changed. How you
interact with one another your daily lives.
Your access to everything from medical
appointments to meetings with families. Everyone's lives have changed
in the last nine months.
We will come out of this. It will take some
time. Best estimates are we will be living with pandemic restrictions
at least through the middle next year, if not through all of next
year. That requires us as a society to take
a lot of steps that we had an anticipated not just to get through it.
But as we get through it and prepare to come
out of it to make sure when we come out of it, we
really change structurally those systems that were
inequitable so that we can come back stronger
more just and more equitable it will take
work from all of us. It is been really
devastating to so many families in so many people. A record number of people
are out of work. Small businesses have closed, people have lost loved
ones, and people have seen.
The impacts of the
racial disparities in such a deep and personal way that is caused pain and trauma
not just in our city but across the country.
And in the end
in about a week and a half, we go to the polls an we
elect a president and the national.
President matters for us in
Seattle. Yesterday we had a file a lawsuit because this
president labeled our city and anarchist jurisdiction. Ann has
threatened and taken actions to take away all our federal
funding. That would be everything from programs that age
friendly Seattle relies on to the covid relief funding to
transportation dollars. We will fight it. I think we
will prevail, but it just shows that in this challenging
time that we must come together.
To really look forward to not just the city we are
today, but the city that we must become as we come out
of Kovid.
Thank you very much for taking the time. I'm gonna take a sip
on my coffee now.
Thank you, Mayor Air. This is Anthony
Derrick I'm matters digital advisor and I'll be moderating today's Q and
So thanks again, mayor. For those really wonderful opening
remarks as a reminder to everyone who's joining us this morning, if you
have a question, please go ahead and enter it into the Q&A. We've
got only a few. At this point, we'd love to see more and it
t would be really great if you could put your name so we can address
you by name. So the first question we have this morning
is about the city's budget due to the
COVID-19 crisis, mayor.
From Teresa, she would like to know how
are you going to balance priorities in the upcoming
budget due to the shortfalls that we've seen with COVID-19.
And mayor, don't forget to take yourself off mute.
Thank you Teresa for that
question, under the way the city charter works, I was required to deliver my
budget about two weeks ago.
Under our, they'll state law our
r budget has to be balanced. We can only spend
the amounts that we project that we will take in revenues next
year and so right now we're in the midst of deciding what the
budget will be for 2021 because of
the covid crisis, we had the unusual circumstance
that we for 2020 no longer had a
balanced budget, and we're required to do so
We lost about 300 million dollars
between 2 and 300 million dollars in revenues to the city.
For 2020, so we had to go back
and make up that gap. The good news was at the
outset of the pandemic, because we were one of the first
in it. We were able to see immediately the huge
economic consequences that we thought it would have. So we took some steps
right away to freeze
hiring, reduce expenses, and we're able to make up
many millions of dollars. In that way. We also
were able to get through our delegation.
The first law that passed for covid relief
we were able to insert into that cities of a certain
size would get direct aid. It would not have to go through
the state or the counties and we in
the city of Seattle were one of a handful of
cities in the country, so we were able to get immediate covid relief
to help us. Whether some of the deficits for
the great programming that's so necessary during this
time. So as we're looking forward to next year, we have a
deficits of the same.
Amount and going in my values
and principles were clear. Number one is the essential covid
relief. We were giving to people and small
businesses and individuals. We would try to continue and
not cut that programs. It's more important
than ever to be able to provide some of those safety net
t programs and programs that give housing
stability. Food stability in the like. Second, I wanted to
make sure that we recognize that what
that I believe. True community safety.
Comes not from police it
t comes from having strong, resilient and vibrant
communities in our communities of color in
Seattle have been not just left behind but left
t out and purposely by some of the
institutions that have been designed for over generations.
We know that we need, for example, invest
more in health care, access to employment access
s to affordable housing, access to education, justice and
d by every one of those metrics are community
of color, particularly our black community indigenous community
false have fallen behind, and so I
pledged that we would spend at least 100 million dollars in
investments like that. But those investments would be guided by community
and so announced a community task force made up of leaders
from throughout the city of Seattle from.
Organizations and individuals very
tide to the communities of color in the black community, and
indigenous community. They will be doing the community engagement
to work with community on determining what are
the priorities for those investments
I also have asked a variety of options so that we can make
that kind of investment on a long term basis. Over 10
years at least, and I think it is through that kind
of budgeting that we're in a down cycle. It is the time
now to invest in.
Equity, because otherwise when we come out
of this kovid economic crisis, and
health crisis, it will take years to
recover and it will take even longer if we don't build those
building blocks now. So we're investing things also like green and healthy
streets. I believe coming out of this week and come back better for
the climate. So we're dinner. Age of priorities
to number one. Investing people #2 to
position is a city to be more green and more accountable.
Thank you, mayor our next question
n today comes from Joe and Joe asks
how is the city planning to provide services previously provided
by the transition team and the navigation
team. Joe notes that the need is not gone away and asks
what do you think we can do at this point to
address this need?
So Joe, thank you for the question, it's a
great question. I may have a better answer next
week because we've been having ongoing discussions
and negotiations with the City Council on what we could do
to replace these resources. I think it's
well known now that one of my disagreements with the budget, that city
Council passed was their elimination of the
navigation team, including the team at the Human Services
Department, that captain property, and
did outreach in the like.
We have not just the need continues
but the need is growing and we have to have the
resources to deal with these issues. The huge impacts
that some of the encampments have on the people living in the encampments as
well as the impacts on community. So we've been working
with council. We're hopeful that council will agree to the
to the compromise we proposed before, which
is to continue to fund
people in the Human Services Department to oversee.
Increased outreach to those encampments
We will still be working within discussing with them
how we increase the amount of shelter capacity available to bring more
people inside, and what we can do to accelerate
the building of housing itself, including permanent
supportive housing. Really excited that we have a project coming in
line that will be one of the one of the problems we've had
is that each individual unit of affordable housing
cost around 300 twenty $5000 to build
And if it's permanent supportive housing.
As much as $20,000 a year
for services and maintenance, it takes about 2
wo to three years to build. We can't scale
that as a city to meet the demand, so we have our first project coming
in line is using new building techniques to bring it
on less expensive, Leanne more quickly and
we're looking at all options across the region
to see how we can bring more people inside.
Thank you mayor, and thank you Joe for that
question. Our next question is from an anonymous anonymous
question Asker and they would like
to know what assistance is available for paying property taxes
And they note that with the rise
of property, property values and stagnant incomes, they want to
have income requirements been updated, or what other assistance could be available.
So that's a good question. Then it was one that
had come in earlier this
month because of when property taxes or do as you
property taxes themselves, or lefty
at the County level by the assessor in the County
government and controlled by the state. But we've been
working with them to see if there's programs they delayed
the payment of the March payments that were due, and I think there's
ongoing discussions for the October payments. And when they are due.
That would have to be centered at the
County. To my knowledge, there's not yet been a fund created
for payment of property taxes. The governor is working
on a program for mortgage payment, but the issue and
property tax is a very good one. If you could email
us at Jenny.Durkan@seattle.gov
remind us will get more information on and send
you a response.
Thank you very much, mayor. Our next question also from
m an anonymous question Asker Mayer with
the creation of a regional authority for homelessness in our
in our region, how can we better track and share
progress to a stated goal regarding our homelessness crisis in our region?
So that is
that question goes to the core of I think why regional homeless authorities
so important. I think all of us on this
call node that the issues that
have related to people living on house don't stop at any
city border. We have more and more people who fallen into homelessness
despite the fact that we are spending
this year alone twice as much as last year. And I almost
doubled the spending on that before we had
some successes before the pandemic. We were moving more
people in the long term housing then before we had shifted our shelter.
System from mats on the floor to
enhance shelters that really provided more support
Services. Available 24/7 and things like that
But it is very uneven we have seen
n that the city of Seattle is shouldering most of the
burden financial burden and services
burden in King County.
Only about 50% based on some of the
data we've seen of the people that city of Seattle
serves. People experiencing homelessness actually living in Seattle
when they became homeless. A number of those is
significant. Portion were living in city. Other cities in King County in
Washington state. So we have to track as a
region and as a state we need a system that requires
every city under the growth management
act or other tools not only to have density but to
o ensure that they have adequate affordable housing.
In their communities an adequate services
s for people experiencing homelessness so that people can be
served in the communities that they live, and this will
only happen, I believe, through a regional authority into greater
reater accountability at the state level and tracking one of
the things that we will be doing in the new regional authority is
they will be adopting a strategic plan. The public will have input into
that does exactly what you said. What are our
goals and how do we track them? How do we hold not just the.
Yeah.
The system accountable, but how do we make
sure that each part of that system is delivering on what it
needs to do to really deal with this very, very
difficult issue?
Thank you mayor. So our next question another
r anonymous question early on in the Cove in
9 pandemic we were lucky enough to
experience another crisis that was a bit closer to home. So this
is an open ended question mayor. But what are we going to do about the West Seattle bridge?
So I was in West Seattle
last Friday an in Georgetown, in South
Park talking to people. Personally, I've been spending a lot of time trying to
talk to those communities, but most of it's been virtual
on. I was able to break out of the virtual boundaries.
The impacts of the West Seattle Bridge cannot
be overstated on those communities for
West Seattle. It is. It is really hurt
duals and businesses. It is cut mobility to
o essential things. Doctors appointments, let alone
where people work for the communities of
South Park. It has created other issues they have
e more traffic going through their neighborhoods and communities which
h is increased their already large environmental burden
an Georgetown and so to have similar types of experience in terms of
traffic patterns and.
Impacts on the community so
o we want to deal with each of these. I will not tell you
that you're going to have a solution in the West Seattle Bridge this
year or next year under any of the alternatives, but we
are pushing forward in my instructions is Seattle Department
t of Transportation was number one to take whatever steps
we needed to do to make sure that as we evaluated whether
we needed to replace a repair that we didn't exclude either of those
options and move forward on both? So right
now we're showing up the bridge which.
Is required on whatever option we do we
have to shore it up. If we repair it and we have
to shore it up if we're going to replace it. Because otherwise it could
collapse, making the replacement of much more difficult
problem. We had a new alternative which engineers
proposed recently on a rapid replacement that
we're evaluating, but there will be more input by
the community this week and next week on to what
the cost benefit analysis shows there was.
Three questions, what would it cost? How
long would it take? How long would it last? Because
we don't want to have a remedy that only last two
years and then West Seattle's cutoff again. So it is an
urgent urgent problem and we are going to
hopefully get a solution. I'll say one last thing about it
is we found a lawsuit yesterday against the
Trump administration and Department of Justice because they have
created what they call an anarchist jurisdiction
list to Denias Federal funding.
And to take federal funding back that would
d include transportation dollars that might help on the West Seattle Bridge, An
Sound Transit. So we one reason that we
felt it was urgent to take that action, which I think we will
prevail on, was to make sure that we don't fall
behind on so many of the critical things we need to do and get the
federal funding that isn't a gift
to us. It's been appropriated by Congress and its taxpayer
dollars that people in Seattle paid.
Mayor you mentioned in
your answer to that question about the isolating impacts of
the West Seattle Bridge being down, we have a question
from John who is in HD staff person and
his question is or he notes, that the pandemics
dragging on really is creating a social isolation
problem, especially for older adults. So what are your thoughts
How can we work together to promote social connectivity, especially for our aging population?
That is such a great question, and I think we're getting better
at it.
Look, I think when the pandemic hit everybody.
I went to shelter in
place and there was both a lot of fear and
trepidation about what we could do. We didn't know as much about the virus communication
and we didn't have platforms like this setup or ways to
check in on each other. I think the virus is
still is dangerous. Do not listen to anything else that is still as dangerous
and we have to be very careful from Seattle
has through all the work we've done, whether it is people
masking up or being socially distant. So being
isolated or setting up.
Our testing sites. We're we
have some of the lowest rates of any large city in
America, but it also is having huge and devastating impacts
One of the impacts that right now I think that
has been underappreciated that our government is going to be working with
the state an hopefully the federal government on is
those mental health impacts that we're seeing across
the board, particularly for our aging
population. But for everyone else, I recently talked to.
The number of the companies in
Seattle large and small. An ask them about what their
concerns were in the next year, an
surprisingly all of 'em have business concerns. All the more worried about whether they
will continue to employ the people that they have and how their employees will
make it through it. But to a person
they are worried about the mental health impacts that
this isolation has had on everyone
An I think it is even more so on
our senior an aging population, so it's one of the things that
Jason and I have talked about.
And how we in the city of Seattle can
start again, reconfiguring. Frankly again, we gotta
learn from community. So you all have ideas on things you wish you
had over these last five
months. Whether it's from your community or your government, away to check
in on friends away, to check in on your church, whatever it is
that would make you feel more connected, because unfortunately will be living
with this for awhile longer. We would love to
hear your ideas and be able to empower your
ideas, because if you're feeling it.
I can guarantee you many, many people
are feeling the same thing, so I think if we work
together and really try to reconnect ourselves, we
can deal with some of those issues of isolation
But it has to be super intentional because we're going
into winter and winter's already hard in Seattle.
Mayor with that question, it seemed as though there May
be some thought about this already, but a question from
Brent. What would you like to see? Age friendly Seattle focus on in 2021?
So I think age friendly
Seattle can continue to help us on.
What we do in this pandemic, for the question that
was just asked and what are those things now that we know are
more of a rhythm, have been the hardest to deal with
and what are some of the fix we can get to people, whether it's for
food security or social interactions
medical appointments? What are those things we can do through
this pandemic to really get people
through it, but also the issues we had
related to age friendly Seattle didn't disappear
with the pandemic, they only got more aggravated.
So what are the things we also need to do the building blocks
s we have to build so that as we come out of
Covid, we actually are better than when we went into it
And I think that is one of the
true opportunities we have here. This has been the most challenging thing that's happened.
To every individual in every organization.
Ann, but with that comes
huge opportunity to really reset how we do a lot of
things and to really focus on what matters and
what we've seen through this pandemic is.
People of have really had
to focus on what was most important to them at what mattered
most in their life.
And I think if we take those lessons and
amplify them, we can come out of this better and stronger.
Thank you, mayor. We're shifting focus
here just a little bit with our next question, anonymous question Asker
is the city able to convert unused public property
into housing? If it's mixed market rate and
low income, would it not be self supporting?
The answer is Yes an we are it's
s actually one of the really exciting things that we had started to
move the needle on before the pandemic come and our office of
housing is continuing to move that needle
I worked with representative Frank Chopp who
has a deep, deep history and affordable housing. Ann was
speaker the house at the time to pass a law
that allowed the city to use it. Sir, Plus
properties for affordable housing and before that
the law required us to actually.
From the city to use for affordable housing
which is counter intuitive and so we have a number of
a number of projects underway where we are using Sir Plus
property or property that the city owned. Four affordable housing
an actually using them in some cases for
not just affordable housing rentals, but home ownership opportunities
in units that will be permanently affordable we're doing
g that in North Seattle. We're going to be doing that
in the area around Discovery Park, we
also have some projects coming along.
In South Seattle yesterday also is
very proud as a board member of Sound Transit we've been
n working for about a year and a half to get sound
Transit to give us there Sir plus property in
n around their station so we could use it or affordable housing
And yesterday the Sound Transit board authorized
that transfer so we will have new parcels in South
Seattle that we've already slotted into build those
kind of affordable housing opportunities, including some that will be
permanently affordable home ownership opportunities.
So I think it's a really exciting program and one that
we're going to be looking for more opportunities to do just that
to put our land to work to address 1
of the biggest issues we have.
Great Speaking of exciting programs
and really revolutionary ideas, we have a question from an
anonymous Asker to talk more about our safe and healthy
streets program and how we're thinking about making that
and what you think it could do to benefit older persons an people
e living with disabilities.
So I think this is also one of the
Silver Linings for the pandemic
because people were staying home and we had
so fewer people on the streets. It allowed us to turn those
streets into places that could be open for people
to socially distance but get outside.
When we first started it
had been. I'm really one of the fortune things I'm
able to do is I had been elected right before the pandemic hit
to the governing board. For the mayor. See 40
conference, which is a global conference of Mayors on the
issue of climate change an in that
t once kovid hit. I was also then elected to the
covid relief group for the global work of
mayors. I was able to talk to Mayor Hidalgo and some of the
other mayors who designed what they called the 10
minute city.
How do you design A city that people can get
what they need within 10 minutes of walking or biking from
their home? And this kind of future that we have for
a mixed mobility and to reduce our
reliance on vehicles so our sales Department
of Transportation are really my hat off to Sam, Zimbabwe
and his team and to a person
named Elliot who's on my staff who I said
let's do it. Let's ourselves open as many streets as
possible and get people the ability to go
go out to walk to bike to feel safe.
Anet has been hugely
successful. Our second phase was to then take back some of our sidewalks
and streets to allow restaurants to operate because
being outside is so much safer in the time of Kovid and that
too has been very successful. It's going to be tricky are here in the rain
so I think we want to hang on to as many of those healthy streets
as possible and really be thinking about how we build that into our
city going forward. Because I do believe
for all of us, but particularly for.
The age friendly agenda that we have having
that kind of open space and
capability to have mobility that is
safe is really important. There is a
challenge and that is that there, particularly when we
have restaurants on sidewalks that creates
mobility issues for people living with disabilities and
so we. One reason for the Open Streets is to also give place
an access for those and also be able to use the sidewalk spaces
for restaurants so.
We're balancing those things together, but I think it's
if you haven't been out in your neighborhood
and walking on some of your open streets
do it. It's really you see people out, but
you feel safe 'cause your distance you. Hopefully wearing your mask
every time. And even in these wintery days, there's always
those brakes where the rain stops and it's good to get outside.
Great thank you mayor and
so far on today's call we've had some questions about homelessness
about our infrastructure, about what we're going to
do to help get more of our community inside. But now
we're going to really tough question from Sarah Pickleball is a
wonderful sport for seniors, in spite of being the
birth of pickled birthplace of Pickleball. Seattle has no dedicated courts and limited spaces to play mayor
How can we get more pickleball in
Seattle? That is the first time in three years? Anyone's asked me about
pickle ball. I love it.
I will talk to our parks people. I will tell
you I'm not good at pickle ball. I hit it too far and
too hard, which probably is not a surprise to anybody and
have a hard time staying in the court but
t it is a great game. An it's
let's find out about it whether we can have some pop up. Pickleball courts.
Great thank you mayor we
e are reaching the end of the questions we have published today so I'm
m going to encourage more people to send. We have about 5 to 10
more minutes to ask a few more
questions. I see another one popping up. Thank you so much for submitting
that mayor. This question is from an anonymous Asker, What do you
think it will take for folks to regain trust in
government at every level? The local, state, and
specially the national level?
I think.
I think it's going to be hard.
First, I think the national government
that regaining trust.
Means that you have a government that actually working for the
people and we haven't seen that in the last four years, I think
in my personal view, and so I think that having
a government that is focused not on sowing division baton bringing people
e in, uniting us on our common aspiration xar common
n dreams in our common goals for our country, is what
needs to happen at the local level. I think that trust is
built in a number of ways, but I
think one of the things that is.
Always causes distrust is when people
view their government as separate from themselves
rather than an extension of themselves
and the Democratic will.
I think that we will never be in a place in
this region for period of time
that any of the problems and challenges we have will be
fixed by government.
It's going to take all of us and it's going to take
individual action and for us to have trust in government, we have to have trust in
each other and trust in our abilities to work together to
solve big challenges. And one of the
things that's been very difficult. I think, particularly over the last four years
is that trust in each other that trust to come
together to address those mutual challenges has
been greatly diminished because of the hard, divisive lines that have been drawn
I think that we've done pretty well in Seattle on that front.
Where we have tackled big problems
but the last year it's been more difficult and so I
think that we have to get back to a place
where one government has to reflect and listen
to the community and the values that it serves
And two it really is
s not something separate from the people ultimately
y the most good that's done in any community
I believe comes from the community. Ann is done by the community
and then it is that shared work together.
It really moves society forward
so I think that trust gets restored when we can
start. I think again to be in rooms together to build
trust together and to find those things that there really
is common aspiration's to meet the
common challenges.
Thank you mayor question
from an anonymous question Asker
r feels sometimes feels like aging population is left out of city
planning. The example that they give is
S dot and a focus on bike lanes. You can
reply directly to that mayor, but I think it would be nice for
to hear more generally on what you think
the city can do to make the aging population feel as though it is
brought into these conversations and that we are
looking out for them when we make decisions.
So I think that it is true to a certain extent an.
It was, I think, a difficult thing
for city is city grew so rapidly.
An much of the growth and much of
the planning was done to serve the
folks who were adding to the growth. So it was the people
moving here for the new jobs in the new companies that were being created and
it was stimulating all this growth. But at the
same time, the population the aging population have been living here
who moved here had different
needs. Everything from mobility to services and
so working with Jason's team, we've been really trying to focus
on what are those things that we.
No, were problems take the issue
of mobility. We spend a lot of time and
money working on building out more
transit an we before the pandemic had done
a really remarkable job in our city in our region
n we were the only large cities in America where
transit use was increasing, not decreasing.
But that transit isn't always friendly to the
aging population, both because of the Accessibility of buses where
the routes were. Whether you could get to the routes and it
t was one of the reasons why we started the pilots that we called
Villa where we were. People could get that last mile
and actually have like a shuttle bus come pick them up and take them to either
medical appointments or to transit hubs
We need to continue to look at how we do
that. We also did a thing where we looked at each of our senior centers
in the city of Seattle.
And look at it through the lens of the aging
population that may be traveling to and from those senior centers
And what were the obstacles whether it
t was crosswalk signs that didn't give
people enough time to get across the street, and so it
was dangerous whether it was making sure that
there was ramp so people had Accessibility. If they had limited mobility.
We also know that from what's happened in the pandemic, that
the services we have for an aging population aren't
meeting what we need. Well have a lot of great programs
It is they are not always accessible to people with different
languages or different abilities, and they haven't really
been informed by the population itself. So again, it's a time
where we need to learn more as we are an
aging population. I'm an aging population and what are the things
that we know we need today and are going to be needing
in the next 20 years, particularly as.
Are Boomer generation
ages and how do we prepare for that in a way that allows
people to have access to this great city and to
the great programming an events in the city once
e we can finally get out of our zoom calls?
That's Great Mayor Ann. And Speaking of plans
and the needs of community, we have another question from an
anonymous question Asker who wants to hear a little bit more about your
plans and your views to reimagine the Seattle
Police Department. They mentioned that
the call, of course, is to cut police funding by 50%, but they want
to know how we balance that demand and work to keep people safe.
So thanks for that question and I think this is
a question that we will be having some
deep discussions in the coming months throughout the city
of Seattle will be setting up coffee
hours in town halls to get people's input on
exactly those questions so we know where
everyone in Seattle is on some of these issues.
My view and the vision that I
have now after listening to people but also having worked in and
d around the criminal legal system and
community organizations for over 40
years is that we can we need
to reimagine what policing does policing has
s changed over the last 10 and 20 years were now police
are called to address many situations
in many events. That before would have been handled differently.
By our society, and I think if you
put police officers at one table and community members in
another table and said, what are three things that police
do today that you'd rather have somebody else do or would be better
to have somebody else do those lists
s would be very similar. Give you
an example mental health crisis an people in
n substance disorder crisis. It is a
growing issue in every city in America
We went from a promise in the 1980s from the institutionalization.
People who had mental health or other
challenges to promise of community based services
Those community based services never really materialized it
t is scaled to meet the need of
people and so today. For example last year
the Seattle Police Department responded
almost 17,000 Crisis calls
17,000 times. Police officers were, guns were
responding to people who were in crisis. Mental health crisis.
Substance abuse crisis we've done
a lot of work at the Seattle Police Department to equip them to
deal with those calls. Crisis intervention, training, connections
with social workers at every precinct more
e crisis intervention specialist, and as a result, those
calls. Unlike when I investigated the Seattle
Police Department, is US attorney resulted in
a minimal use of force.
But it still left the police with very few
options, because once the police intervene, they have a choice
of either taking that person in crisis if they've committed a crime
to jail, where there is no
treatment, or if they have not committed a crime, may be to Harborview
Hospital where there is limited ability to have treatment we
e need a different system to deal with those
issues. Seattle can't do that alone that
t has got to be state and federally supported, and it has to be regional.
So that we have a different system in
place so that if someone is in crisis we can respond to that
person. Better yet have the resources to
support that person, so they're not in crisis
on our downtown streets, we started a pilot called
health one because when I came in one of the things I looked at
is, where are police responding today where our top calls
so we can evaluate? How do we better tool or Police Department?
I will admit I was
surprised the top five places where police were
called. The majority of them were shelters. Some of our
larger shelters that the police were responding and
fire responding because people were in crisis
and committing sometimes acts of violence it
t makes no sense to have. That is the front response
So we created a program called health one
which is a trained medic and a social worker
Kind of like medic one was for heart
attacks. We thought this could be.
The solution for some of the low acuity
calls an instead of police responding to one of those
calls. Health one can respond. They can take the time instead of just either
taking someone to jail or the hospital they can find out what
they need. Are they offer medications? Do they need their medications do
o they have a caseworker? They need is their family. Do they need to go to the
hospital? It's been enormously successful and
we're now, hopefully, if my budgets adopted, we will scale that program to
add more, but it also
takes resources, time and training.
And so, as we re imagine policing we have
e to have something to fill those vacuums
and build those community based solutions the other
r thing we have to do is we have to go upstream because the true
solution for community safety is healthy and
resilient communities to invest in things like affordable housing
access to healthcare, childcare, pre
K true educational justice and economic opportunity
If a community is healthy and the need for police is less.
So we have to work on every front we have to
re imagine what the police are doing and how they do it. We have to build
a community based response and we have to invest in those
communities have been left behind particular black, indigenous and
people of color communities and if we do that overtime
I think we can see significant changes.
Thank you very much, mayor we
are reaching the end of our time here with Q&A
So I want to say thank you mayor, I want to say thank you to everybody who submitted
a question. We have lots of really great questions that
just came into the chat and it's unfortunate that we
can't get to the mall. But I think the best thing to do at this point would be
to put a pin in it. Mayor if you want to say anything else about
our plan for reopening, leave with
some thoughts on what you envision the city to look like in the
future, as we as we come out of this COVID-19 crisis.
So.
I it's let me tell you a little bit
about what my vision was before the pandemic hit, because it's still
guides what my vision is. Though it is going to be more
challenging for us. When I came in as mayor in
some ways, Seattle was the envy of all of America we
e had some of the highest number
of technology jobs. Some of the greatest companies in the world were
founded here and started here and thrived here we had
we were the fastest growing city in America with the hyest.
Wages paid, and almost any city in America
but two at the same time that prosperity was
s not being shared. We were in the midst of
what I described in is a time that was more transformative
than the Industrial Revolution. Where the
technology and innovation economy was quickly displacing
the other economy without having the ladders and
access from the prior economy to the new
economy an clearly the people being left
behind where the mostly our communities of color.
And you could almost draw a line North to South
in Seattle and see the
stark differences. So we worked really hard to say. How do we build
that Bridge to the new economy? It's one reason why having
free college was so important to me as mayor and instituting
that program so that every kid in Seattle would have
that opportunity to get a leg up and then to pair that
with internships and jobs paid for so
that people had access. But that is only if you graduate from college
so we also had a worked. How do we help the Seattle
public schools to really close the.
The gap, particularly for students of color
and how do we get Quality Pre K so kids are showing
up ready to learn in kindergarten?
We started those programs as well as announcing
unprecedented amounts of affordable housing. 1.5
billion dollars in affordable housing. I've had the great honor to announce
his being mayor and new investments and
things like Africatown, the Ethiopian Community Center
the Filipino Community Center, trying to build that
community resilience.
But then the pandemic
hit and what it showed just even more starkly
where those disparities?
And I think that it is made our
obligation even greater to move and
to acknowledge the roots of those disparities, the systemic
racism over generations that the solutions have
to be community based and that we have
to intentionally and purposely really open
up that opportunity and promise so that Seattle continues
to be an innovative city, a city
with a great diversity, an immigrant and refugee population.
A city that is growing in new
an open and welcoming a city that is
the hub to great innovation, where the innovation is an art
or technology.
But that will only happen if we
can make it inclusive and it's going to be
hard coming out of this. Pandemic is going to be really
hard for every city in America, including the city of
Seattle. We will be in some kind of kovid restrictions
probably through next year, our largest
employers have already said that they will not be returning to
our downtown through at least the middle of next
year, some even longer. So all of
those people who are coming into our city and providing the
backdrop for.
Restaurants and small businesses in our brick and
mortar businesses.
They're not there anymore, and so we've
got a plan. We have to have a plan that
is just and equitable, but it is very intentional
because every city, not just in America, but every
city across the Globe is going to be coming out of covid about
the same time and every one of 'em is going to have the
same aspiration's that we have in Seattle and that is to build
back in economy to make sure that people are unemployed, that small businesses can
thrive. The communities of color lifted up.
And in many ways we are going to be very we're
e going to be competing for those jobs that
are the jobs of the future and that will help us keep
the jobs of the present. And so the
only way we can do it as if we have those shared aspirations and
work together because it will be challenging an it
will take it will take grit. But this city is
done it before. And I believe we will do it again.
Thank you
mayor, and that concludes our Q&A portion, so I will
hand it back over to Lenny to close this out.
Thank you.
Derek, thank you Mayor Durkan
for stopping by the coffee hour. We hope that you
will visit with us again, hopefully when we've
reopened and it would be an in person. Kind of
a meeting with real coffee and maybe Donuts.
Thank you also to
everyone who joined us today
We appreciate you having a virtual Cup of coffee with
us. If we didn't get to your question.
Or if you have additional questions for the mayors office, you
can direct them to Jenny that
urkin@seattle.gov or feel free
to leave a comment under this video once it's posted
on YouTube, our channel is called Aging King County you
u can search for that on YouTube and we do invite you
to subscribe and enable notifications so that you were the
first to know when this another content is
uploaded for the remainder of 2020 we are alive
e most Thursdays.
At 10:30 AM and at
other times for special events like today's coffee hour
and next Friday at 2:00 PM for a panel
on vaccine trial, participation in the LG BT Q
and two spirit bipac
community. All are accessible at the same URL
you found us today, which is bit dot
LY forward slash age friendly live
There are no spaces but all words are capitalized
and with any.
Aging or disability question or
r concern? We do encourage you to contact community living
connections, a County wide network of community organizations
that can connect you with services and resources such as
food, meals, transportation and housing
options and more information. Referrals are
professional, confidential, and most services are free of
charge. Call them toll free at 1844
4-348-5464 or.
Go to communitylivingconnections.org to see
the list of participating organizations in
this network.
Thank you again to merge any dirt into the
Seattle Public Library and to our viewers have
e a great day.
Thank you Lenny. Thank you, Anthony. Thank you.