CITY COUNCIL: Saka zeroes in on Vision Zero, plus, hear how it went when he and president Hollingsworth meet the media

On a day when our part of the city yielded three crashes of note, District 1 City Councilmember Rob Saka called for an audit of SDOT‘s “Vision Zero“ safety initiative. That’s one of two City Council notes we have tonight. Saka’s call for an audit was announced in an emailed news release one day before the committee he chairs, Transportation, Waterfront, and Seattle Center, gets a Vision Zero briefing. That’s on the agenda for Thursday’s 9:30 am committee meeting; in the news release about the audit, Saka is quoted as saying, ““Vision Zero is about saving lives, and while we are seeing some real progress, the fact remains that too many people are still dying and suffering serious injuries on our streets. This audit will help us take a hard look at what’s working, what’s not, and where we need to sharpen our approach to prevent further tragedies on our roads.” SDOT presented its latest review of Vision Zero during this council briefing three months ago.

Meantime, Saka was one of two councilmembers who showed up this past Monday for a new monthly media availability in which the council’s communication team sends invites to reporters to come to City Hall for open Q&A with councilmembers. We couldn’t go to the first one but decided to go downtown for this one; it’s voluntary for them to participate, and only two signed on this time – Council President Joy Hollingsworth and Councilmember Saka. The half-dozen or so of us newspeople who showed up sat in a conference room facing each of the participants in turn, for about 20 minutes apiece. Hollingsworth went first; we recorded audio of both just in case anyone might be interested in what happened in unrestricted Q&A with councilmembers (spoiler alert, nothing revelatory).

Hollingsworth was asked about the latest budget forecast, encampment policy, neighborhood foot policing as recently announced for two neighborhoods, potentially auditing the Human Services Department (she said she’d “welcome an audit in any department”), the mayor’s call for more density in the Comprehensive Plan, the library levy, and construction costs (observing that those affect people building backyard ADUs as well as professional builders and saying “I think we should look at everybody as a developer”). Here’s the unedited audio:

Next, Councilmember Saka, who was asked about some of the same topics – neighborhood policing (“West Seattle could benefit from a similar program”) and the Comprehensive Plan, as well as whether anything should be done to rein in rising rents.

We asked about last weekend’s gunfire incidents, with bullets through home windows in two West Seattle neighborhoods;
he said he’s “aware” of them, noted he meets regularly with SPD Chief Shon Barnes, said we “need to get creative in prevention” and touted some money he secured in last year’s budget for a late-night teen program in High Point (one of the neighborhoods where there was weekend gunfire). Later in his Q&A, we asked about the east-of-35th encampment sweep, having just learned about it; Saka said he’d been calling for “remediation” of that area (his operations director Erik Schmidt, who was in the room, told us afterward that they’d just learned about the sweep plans that morning). Here’s unedited audio of the Q&A with Councilmember Saka:

Councilmembers have several committee meetings most weeks, plus full-group meetings at 2 pm Mondays and Tuesdays – all the agendas can be found here.

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