After three and a half weeks of working behind the scenes today Council member Andrew Lewis announced that an agreement had been reached between the Mayor’s Office, the City Council, and homeless outreach providers on a first step toward replacing the disbanded Navigation Team with a new model for how the city will deal with homeless encampments.
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Mayor vetoes Council’s 2020 budget changes, but cuts a deal on COVID relief
Today Mayor Durkan vetoed the heart of the City Council’s changes to the 2020 budget rebalancing package, while also announcing that she had reached a compromise deal with several Council members on a revised COVID-19 relief package that would deliver $45 million this year and next without fully draining the city’s reserve funds.
Continue readingCouncil approves amendments to force layoffs in SPD, disband Navigation Team, and more
Today the City Council marched through about two dozen amendments to the 2020 budget intended to address calls to partially defund and re-organize the Seattle Police Department. Along the way, they also achieved another long-time goal of progressive advocates: eliminating the Navigation Team. After the vote this afternoon, I recorded an hour-long debrief with Omari Salisbury of Converge Media and Marcus Green of the South Seattle Emerald. It was a great, far-ranging conversation, and I think you’ll enjoy watching it.
Continue readingMarathon Council meeting on encampment removals ends in impasse, but hints at a better path
The City Council met for five and a half hours this afternoon. The official topic was a proposed bill that would codify restrictions on the removal of unsanctioned homeless encampments, and from time to time the bill garnered a mention or two. In the end there were no votes today on amendments or on the bill itself, and for the most part things concluded right where they began. But there were the occasional nuggets of wisdom shared, and if you squinted you could see hints of a path to get the city to a better place in its attempts to …
Continue readingCouncil, Mayor warring over homeless encampment cleanups again
It feels like Groundhog Day: once again, the Mayor’s office and the City Council are at war over when it’s appropriate to remove unsanctioned homeless encampments. But COVID-19 puts a new twist on this never-ending debate.
Continue readingA trio of COVID-19 response announcements from the city (UPDATED 3/18)
Today the City of Seattle made three separate announcements of actions it is taking as part of its response to the COVID-19 outbreak. (UPDATE 3/18 — see below on encampment cleanups)
Continue readingEditorial: here’s what the city should do about the Navigation Team
Yesterday afternoon’s Council committee hearing to review the most recent quarterly report for the Navigation Team was nothing short of a bloodbath. You can watch the video here, if you are so inclined, and read Erica Barnett’s summary. In a nutshell: the Human Services Department tried to put lipstick on a pig, obscuring the struggles that the Navigation Team faces. And the Council was having none of it. Prior to yesterday’s meeting, there were already some vocal critics of the Navigation Team, including Council members Sawant and Mosqueda, but the rest of the Council appeared to see the team as …
Continue readingNavigation Team publishes its quarterly report
Yesterday the city’s Navigation Team published its quarterly report for the final three months of 2019. The report includes statistics on the team’s activities and outcomes, and answers some (but not all) of a set of questions posed by the City Council.
Continue readingA timeline of the Navigation Team
Given today’s existential debate on the Navigation Team, I thought it would be useful to have a timeline for it, extending from its creation in early 2017 to the present day.
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City Council debates the future of the Navigation Team
This morning the City Council began discussing in earnest its competing ideas for changes to next year’s budget for the homelessness response, following its first conversation two weeks ago. Much of the time was taken up with one question: what to do with the Navigation Team. And it’s clear that the Council is nowhere near consensus.
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