A look at the Mayor’s race from an economic
justice perspective: please circulate
This week - McGinn’s candidacy (next week Mallahan)
Let’s face it, from an economic and racial justice
perspective, there are problems with both Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan.
I’m reserving final judgement on whom I’m voting for until we have our
meeting later in the week with Mallahan. McGinn readily met
with us after the primary and my thoughts below on his candidacy are informed by
that meeting, what he has said on the campaign trail, and disagreements we had
with him during the last legislative session given his support for the
Futurewise Transit Oriented Development bill – a law that had it passed – would
have forced unacceptably high levels of growth around rail especially in SE
Seattle with no regard to impacts on those communities.
Mallahan initially agreed to meet with us after the
primary, later canceled it, but then rescheduled it for later this week. Despite
the difficulties we’ve had getting this meeting with Mallahan, I remain open to
his candidacy and look forward to hearing more from him which we will report on
early next week.
In the primary, I voted for Mallahan based largely on a
meeting we had with him on June 23rd and what he told us back then
vis a vis his stance on poverty, race, homelessness and neighborhood issues.
But here’s what has given me pause this time around. Since
the primary, Mallahan has cozied up to corporate and establishment types
far more than I would like to see and appears to have stepped back from
positions he articulated when we met with us before the primary especially his
stance on Mercer and South Lake Union. I hope we can sort this out later in the
week with him.
From an economic and racial justice perspective, I think
there are some differences between the Mayoral candidates that may be worth
parsing out. For example, McGinn has consistently given support to tent cities
and the efforts of SHARE/WHEEL. Our conversations with him and his meetings with
SHARE/Wheel tell me McGinn likely would be better on these things than Mallahan.
We'll want to discuss this closely with Mallahan, however.
My point here is that even if there is only this difference
between the two candidates, it matters who you vote for....because it has or
could have a real human consequence for lots and lots of people. Those tent
cities save lives - finding a permanent site for Nickelsville could save
lives.... adding more shelter beds would save lives.....
And in several forums, not just with us, McGinn has said he
is not a fan of Burgess's anti-panhandling crusade, or for that matter the
Sidran laws. If Mallahan isn’t on the same page here – and
we’re not sure he is – again, there are real human consequences associated with
these differences that could lead you to vote for McGinn. Such social control
laws pander to the downtown chamber of commerce and cast a net over all who are
homeless and disenfranchised while doing nothing to address the causes of
homelessness or other underlying structural inequalities in our city. The Asian
Weekly reported that Mallahan supported Burgess’s new anti-panhandling law while
Publicola said he did not. Then at the City Club he held up a “waffle” sign on
the matter.
Here’s another reason you might want to vote for McGinn,
however Machiavellian my reasoning might be here. Simply
putting McGinn in office could indeed lead to the death of tunnel option as
replacement for the viaduct. If this
project goes forward, nearly every
dollar we have locally that could be used to meet a backlog of bridge, street,
and sidewalk repairs in our neighborhoods especially in low income and neglected
communities, will be swallowed up for decades to come. The tunnel is something
2/3rds of all
Mind you, McGinn’s surface-only alternative would be a
nightmare also especially for freight haulers, Ballard and West Seattleites.
But by killing the tunnel - to the extent McGinn as Mayor could do that
by simply refusing (or vetoing) payment of the city's share, it could force
downtown elites, the Governor, councilmembers, Frank Chopp et al to put other
options back on to table.....like the elevated or perhaps even the least costly
and best option of them all – the retrofit option. Killing
the tunnel might also kill Paul Allen’s pet project – the Mercer Project since
there's a lot of funding hidden in the tunnel plan for Mercer.
OK, that was the good side of McGinn. Now for the bad or
rather what troubles me the most and reasons why you (and I) may not want to
vote for him.
For McGinn, growth is good for its own sake or, rather,
more growth is preferred because he believes it addresses larger environmental
goals like global warming – a position he shares with what I call the elitist or
corporate wing of the environmental movement. These are the folks who believe we
must upzone at all costs in our nabe’s, pour concrete at all costs in our nabe’s,
rip down existing low income housing, and replace our urban green and trees with
highrises in order to save polar bears. (As we've said so many
times before, there are other viable options to regional growth - management and
responsible levels of new growth that don't require systematic destruction of
our city's livable qualities - like a poly-centered approach)
While professing to be very pro-neighborhood he did not see
any conflict between this pro-density perspective and the things that
neighborhoods were concerned about - the most prominent being how to protect
streams, open space, tree canopy, and for us of course, how we protect or ensure
replacement of affordable housing in the wake of that growth. These things
weren't referenced or rather did not arise when his thoughts were turned to this
discussion.
In other forums and in statements to the press, McGinn also
has made it very clear that we especially need more development around rail
stations - he also is of course a big fan of light rail. Oddly he says he's a
bus advocate but how much can he make available, prescribe, or push for in the
way of new bus service after we pour billions into light rail.
In his words, requiring developers to pay "impact fees" to
help cover infrastructure costs demanded by their projects or requiring
developers to replace 1 for 1 housing they tore down - that this was too "thin a
base" to ask or expect the development sector to bare these costs. How 'bout if
they just pay some of the costs - heck any of the costs associated with their
developments. Just about every other city in the region imposes impact fees to
help them pay for schools, utilities, roads, etc.
McGinn also said "you can't expect developer fees to cover
all these costs”. At the bottom of this I think was his fear that impact fees
might pose a deterrent to more development he wants to encourage – you know
saving those polar bears. In our meeting with him, it did
not seem to impress him when we pointed out that these kinds of policies may
hurt human beings here in our city. We are losing thousands
of low cost units to demolition, speculative sale, conversion, rent increase
(far more than we can ever replace with levy dollars and other public funds) - a
direct result of runaway growth and that upzones would only exacerbate the
problem. He did reference that he played a role in saving U of W owned housing
during his years as a student there (must be 20 years ago or so) and he
referenced his work mitigating the impact of a new Safeway development in
McGinn told us he had a preference for use of incentives
for developers - give them more height and density - if they set aside some
affordable units. He was very vague on how this work, how much money or housing
could be built and at what income levels with such a mechanism. He spoke of
creating some kind of formula - one that still would reward developers
adequately even after they set aside some lower priced units or paid an
in-lieu-of fee.
He seemed unaware of the recent passage of a similar
incentive zoning scheme which will reward developers with lucrative height and
density increases but in return all the public gets is a handful of units set
aside at 80% median at rent levels hundreds of dollars above what average
workers can afford in this city. (and when the need is at or
below 40% of median). He seemed unaware of the fact that most developers
vigorously oppose incentive schemes or that we just raised these “set-aside”
thresholds up to 80% of median at the behest of those developers.
When we brought up Yesler Terrace and the need to guarantee
no net loss "ON
How open will he be to us and others (and their
ideas/concerns)
McGinn assured housing and homeless advocates an open door
when we had concerns we brought to him. And he said he would meet with us to
hear our recommendations for future SHA board appointments before making his
recommendations. I did not detect however any great deal of knowledge about SHA
or its role. We reminded him that their mission was not to win awards for mixed
income development or smart growth, their mission was to reach down and serve
our city's very low income population - the poorest of the poor. He listened to
that and that was about all.
He also said he'd heard a lot of complaints about the need
for change in department heads especially in the Office of Housing but made no
commitment although seemed warm to the idea and certainly would look closely
into it.
He seems to support continued giveaways in South Lake
Union:
Then we got down to a discussion of South Lake Union and
the degree of attention, city time and resources our current Mayor was putting
into that patch of ground that makes up about 1% of the City's land area. He
said he supported the Mercer 2-Way Corridor Project despite rising costs. When
we told him that it was consuming a 100 million in Bridging the Gap
Transportation revenues and that likely more of those funds will be needed as
costs rose for phase II, he said it was a good thing for the area and especially
help make it a more pedestrian and bike friendly neighborhood. Perhaps one
one-hundredth of the $300 million already committed for Mercer will be used for
bike and pedestrian improvements.
When it was pointed out that there simply would not be
enough left over to help us meet neighborhood needs like the S. Park Bridge that
faces closure because no dollars are available or Magnolia Bridge repairs
(shelved already for a decade) or the Lander Street Grade Grade Separation this
didn't seem to register with him. (Remember he says he’s for the neighborhoods),
He either naively believes there's enough money out there to do Mercer and all
these other things (including add more buses and spend billions on Light Rail)
or it's a political tactic to garner support from everyone and every quarter for
his candidacy.
McGinn's only credible response to the comment, "there
ain't enough money" to do Mercer and rest of SLU agenda and all these other
needs in our nabe's - is what I think is his fallback response to all such
comments, "I will kill the tunnel and that will free up revenues to allow us to
do all these other things". But there wasn't enough out there to go around last
year and year before and year before that - before Mercer and SLU costs shot out
of site. This year is the first year that the city's portion of tunnel costs
now appear in the proposed city budget and the 5-year CIP and it only adds to
the dilemma.
McGinn did say he support's retention of the head tax
portion of Bridging the Gap which will be eliminated before the year is out by
our city Council eliminating 50 million or more in funding for Bridging the Gap
projects.
We unfortunately did not get to issues related to police
accountability and whether or not he support revamping the system of police
accountability and replacing it with a stronger form of citizen review - one
with teeth, including case by case review, access to records, and perhaps
subpoena powers. In public forums he’s so far shied away from offering such
specifics.
We had no time to discuss the threat of office expansion
into
I voted for Mallahan in the primary because of his
opposition to Mercer and his cynicism about giving away the farm to downtown...I
thought he was more influenceable on density stuff too and more open to meeting
with neighborhoods and housing advocates. These are issues we must revisit when
we meet with him. If I am not satisified with his responses, I may vote for
McGinn despite his problems.
Despite following the campaigns of the candidates closely,
I don't yet know what Mallahan will say about tent cities and am not sure where
he stands on the Tim Burgess panhandling law. I still think Mallahan is more
likely to be responsive if neighborhoods came to him and voiced strongly their
concerns about runaway density, the need to mitigate impacts of growth, and the
need to require developers to pay impact fees and do 1 for 1 replacement.
McGinn's seems doctrinairely opposed to these things.
We’ll have more to report on Mallahan after our Mallahan
meeting later in the week, however.
- John Fox for the Coalition