Mayor moves forward with Equitable Communities Initiative spending plan, asks Council to lift proviso on funds

Following up from last month’s announcement by Mayor Durkan’s Equitable Communities Initiative task force of its recommendations for how to invest $30 million in the city’s BIPOC communities, this morning the Mayor’s Office sent to the City Council a more detailed proposal for how the funds would be spent.

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Black Brilliance Research final report delivered; attention turns to rolling out Participatory Budgeting

Last Friday the final report of the Black Brilliance Research Project was delivered to the Seattle City Council. As with the preliminary report delivered a few weeks ago (from which there are only a few substantive changes), it contains some interesting insights and has several shortcomings. It does, however, fill out more details in the project organizers’ recommendations for launching the next phase: a $30 million “participatory budgeting” program for the city.

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Mobile vaccination team moves on to next phase

This morning the city’s new Mobile Vaccination Team, which is staffed by Seattle Fire Department paramedics and EMTs, announced that it has finished up its work on vaccinating residents and workers in adult family homes, and as of yesterday has moved on to its next set of people to vaccinate: home healthcare workers, and older residents of permanent support housing and affordable housing buildings in the city.

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Philadelphia safe consumption site struck down by Court of Appeals

In late 2019, the movement to establish “safe consumption” sites in the United States — including in Seattle — got a rare win when a U.S. District Court judge in Philadelphia ruled that Safehouse, that city’s attempt at opening a safe consumption site, did not violate federal law. Today the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in a 2-1 decision, bringing it into alignment with other federal circuit courts.

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Welcome to the next phase of COVID. The rules just changed, so pay attention.

While we were all (rightly) focused on Geroge Floyd, police violence, and structural racism, something important quietly happened on the COVID front in Washington: we moved out of Phase 1, the shutdown. In our new reality some of the rules are the same, but many of them have changed. For the most part, the government seems ready to do its part; but the rest of us aren’t yet.  It’s time to get our act together.

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