Sawant introduces resolution to reject Mayor’s executive order on SPD hiring bonuses

On tomorrow’s City Council Introduction and Referral Calendar is a resolution sponsored by Councilmember Kshama Sawant, which modifies Mayor Durkan’s executive order authorizing hiring bonuses for SPD officers and 911 dispatchers. The resolution guts the authorization for SPD officers, while leaving intact hiring bonuses for 911 dispatchers.

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Durkan returns City Council’s ban on less-lethal weapons unsigned, with a litany of critiques

(story updated below) On August 27th, with the City Council in recess, Mayor Durkan quietly returned unsigned the Council’s ordinance restricting SPD’s use of so-called “less lethal weapons,” allowing it to pass into law unchallenged at least for the moment. But she did take the opportunity to attach a scathing letter detailing a litany of complaints about the legislation, calling it “of doubtful legality,” and claiming that the Council knows that “significant parts of the bill will never go into effect” because of its flaws.

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Gonzalez scolds Durkan over public records requests, but needs to get her own house in order (UPDATED)

For the past several days there have been ongoing revelations regarding mishandling of public records in the city’s executive branch, and particularly in the Mayor’s Office. In brief: for several months from late 2019 through mid-summer 2020, text messages from the city-issued phones of Mayor Durkan, SFD Chief Scoggins, and SPD Chief Best were not archived, and the problem wasn’t discovered until last summer. Once it was discovered and efforts to retrieve the lost texts failed, the Mayor’s Office tried to recreate them by contacting the people that the Mayor had texted. The Mayor’s Office then — allegedly at the …

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Mayor Durkan decides on repairing West Seattle Bridge instead of immediate replacement

This morning Mayor Durkan announced that the city will move forward with repairing the cracked main span of the West Seattle Bridge, with the expectation that it will reopen by mid-2022, restore the bridge to its original expected lifetime, and push out building a replacement for up to 40 years. However, she also said that SDOT will start studying an eventual replacement strategy now, and it will approach Sound Transit about jointly building a third span to West Seattle that could incorporate light rail, bicycles and pedestrians.

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