THE READER
From the Office of Mayor Mike McGinn
News, Updates, and Information
Click here to receive this via email.

SPD 20/20 BULLETIN

WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2012

Presenting the SPD 20/20 Bulletin
In addition to the regular issues of Mayor McGinn’s newsletter “The Reader,” we’ll be sending regular updates on the status of SPD 20/20 – A Vision for the Future.

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About SPD 20/20
SPD 20/20: A Vision for the Future is a set of 20 new initiatives to be completed over the next 20 months that will help build a great police department that is professional, accountable, effective, and fair. These reforms will also increase the safety of our communities while improving the effectiveness of the police department at preventing and controlling crime. The changes we are proposing are intended to be lasting and sustainable. They will give Seattle a department that earns respect as it protects the people we serve.

We’re also in negotiations with the Department of Justice to determine how best to implement the proposals in their report. Our response to DOJ includes a consent decree and a court appointed monitor. The substance of the consent decree matters, and the technical provisions that define the scope and metrics for the monitor need to move us forward and address reforms important to our community.

The SPD 20/20 Plan will not take the place of a negotiated agreement with the Department of Justice. Both will help us build a great police department.

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Assistant Police Chief Mike Sanford on SPD 20/20 implementation
“The SPD 20/20 plan provides us with a tremendous opportunity to partner with our communities, and change the relationship between our city and its police department. We can settle for making superficial changes that will stick only as long as we have the political will to enforce them, or we can fully commit to creating a new culture of respect for individual and customer service in the Seattle Police Department. Today we are demonstrating that commitment to change, and we invite you to hold us accountable.”

See Chief Sanford’s full blog post here.

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Meet the SPD 20/20 team
On Thursday, May 10, Mayor McGinn and Chief Diaz introduced to the public the team responsible for implementing SPD 20/20. We also launched the SPD 20/20 website, where you can read the initiatives, track our progress, find events or request a presentation, and learn more about the 32 members of the team.

You can watch a video of Thursday’s press conference here.

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SPD 20/20 in the news
Mayor McGinn discussed the SPD 20/20 plan on KUOW Monday morning.

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Upcoming Events (for more see http://seattle.gov/spd2020/events.htm):

May 17: 12:00 p.m. – 20/20 briefing by Chief Sanford to Greater Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce, Best Western Plus Executive Inn (200 Taylor Ave N)

May 24: 3:00 p.m. – 20/20 briefing by Chief Sanford, Rainier Chamber of Commerce (5290 Rainier Ave S)

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Posted by: Nathaniel Merrill

Today Mayor McGinn visited Rainier Beach High School to take part in an assembly celebrating the school’s new educational programs and its championship-winning basketball team. Joined by local dignitaries and Rainier Beach alumni, the mayor talked to students about the importance of courses like their new computer science and culinary arts programs.

The Mayor went on to talk about the Be Here Get There attendance challenge, which is currently offering a prize drawing for tickets to a Seattle Sounders match for high school students who come to school every day of the month of May. 

Several professional basketball stars were also there to honor the school, including Rainier Beach alumni Jamal Crawford. Crawford spoke about how student athletes have to focus not only on the court but in the classroom, too. He told the crowd of students that even as a professional basketball player he’s had to use the lessons and information that he gathered at Rainier Beach High School.

Read more »

Posted by: Sam Johnston

Seattle’s residents and businesses need good infrastructure to remain competitive in the global economy. Here in the 21st century, that includes digital infrastructure. Just as canals, roads and rails help move people and goods, fiber optic broadband internet is important for companies moving what some call “digital freight” – enabling Seattle’s innovative economy to continue creating jobs.

Fiber optic broadband networks are orders of magnitude faster than existing networks based on obsolete telephone lines or coaxial cables. These networks, which connect customers to the internet through direct fiber connections, are starting to pop up in places like San Francisco, where a private internet provider recently announced its plans to begin building out a fiber to the home network. In Chattanooga, a local utility went ahead and built that network itself when the private sector indicated it would not.

Here in Seattle, we are committed to building better digital infrastructure. We’re going to start by exploring what our partners can do to help. The City of Seattle has more than 500 miles of fiber that we’ve already paid for, and much of it is lying there, unused. It’s time to fire it up to help our local businesses and creative people innovate.

Today, we are announcing a new ordinance that would allow partners to lease that excess fiber. We will negotiate with companies for better service to nearby neighborhoods who have poor quality service right now. Because that fiber is already there, partners could avoid some of the cost of digging up the street or hanging new cable on poles, making it easier for businesses to invest in digital infrastructure. We are already working with numerous providers to explore how they could deliver service to homes and businesses with this fiber when it becomes available. We want this to spur the development of a larger broadband network in Seattle, in partnership between the public and private sector.

This builds upon work we’ve already done to connect Seattle’s neighborhoods to fiber broadband. Last year we made our conduit available to providers in Pioneer Square, and as a result, more than 50 new customers in that neighborhood now have fiber-based internet services.

We are also working with the University of Washington to attract investment in building new fiber networks near UW facilities, an effort called “GigU.” We’ve already received many good proposals from interested partners, and we will have more to announce on this initiative later in the year.

If the private sector cannot get this done, then the City will have to look at doing it ourselves. That will take years to build and the cost would be significant, but it remains an option. Right now, we can connect more neighborhoods to high speed broadband by using fiber that we’ve already installed. All it takes is a simple legislative change to help us take the next step in building better digital infrastructure.

Posted by: Mayor Mike McGinn

Today Mayor Mike McGinn and Seattle Police Chief John Diaz introduced to the public a new team of Seattle police officers who will lead the implementation of our SPD 20/20 Plan: A Vision for the Future.

The new team consists of 34 members, led by Assistant Police Chief Mike Sanford, and is broken up by initiative, with individual officers taking on leadership on each of the 20 initiatives that make up SPD 20/20.

“We have put in place a cohesive team of leaders who live by Seattle’s values every day, and demonstrate excellence to their peers” said Assistant Police Chief Mike Sanford. “The team members charged with implementing the 20 initiatives come from every unit and every precinct in SPD. Their experience and established relationships in the department will enable them to lead this effort from the ground up.”

“This is an unprecedented commitment to reform,” said Mayor Mike McGinn. “To transform a large organization, you need leadership from within and by example. These officers are some of the best and brightest that SPD has to offer, and their values of customer service, respect for individual rights and collaboration with the community will lead the way to a new era for SPD.”

The mayor also announced a new website that will enable the public to track the implementation of the 20/20 Plan. The website, found at seattle.gov/spd2020, will be updated weekly with new information, and includes a tool that shows our progress on each individual initiative and milestone, as well as our progress overall.

The mayor also outlined our other transparency efforts, including a weekly email bulletin updating the public on our progress (sign up at seattle.gov/spd2020) and the SPD 20/20 Speaker’s Bureau. The Speaker’s Bureau is a team of experts drawn from SPD officers and the mayor’s office who are available upon request to deliver presentations on 20/20 progress to community groups. The presentation will be constantly updated as new information on 20/20 implementation becomes available.

“We encourage the public to hold us accountable for our progress” said Mayor McGinn. “Keep an eye on our 20/20 tracking website, sign up for our weekly bulletin on 20/20 progress, and if you have questions, sign up for our Speaker’s Bureau so we can come out to your community group to answer questions and address concerns face-to-face.”

Posted by: Words: April Thomas, Pictures: Jen Nance

This is a time of unprecedented change for the Seattle Police Department. In the next 20 months, we will enact 125 specific reforms, grouped into 20 initiatives. 20 months from now, these reforms—developed through research and the analysis of successes in other police departments around the world—will have redefined how officers protect our city, and created greater and lasting accountability for every member of SPD. Most importantly, we are committed to building a culture in our police force of respect for the community, accountability, and service to the public.

Our community is calling for change. Local political leaders are united in their desire for reform. And SPD has pulled together an unprecedented commitment of resources to lead in those reforms. Chief John Diaz has charged me with leading a team of 32 sergeants, lieutenants, captains and civilians in the implementation of the SPD 20/20 Vision plan.

The constructive criticisms leveled by the Department of Justice have made our department look internally and ask some tough questions about the way we do business. Yes, we are faced with tremendous challenges to overcome, but this is also a unique opportunity to modernize our department.

Our city deserves a world-class department that is on the vanguard of 21st century policing. To do this right, we must decisively establish our own organizational values, while embracing and incorporating the needs of our community.

To take a Seattle-centric approach, we have worked hand in hand with both our allies and our biggest critics, to identify how we can improve the services the department provides to our city. By working closely with community groups, SPD will be more transparent and directly accountable to our city and the people who have helped us design this plan.

There are also realistic, technical challenges that must be met. The role police officers play in our communities has shifted dramatically over the last few decades. Police officers are now tasked with more than simply fighting crime. Our role has shifted to include social services, and officers often find themselves in the role of community liaison in complex social issues. Our values and practices must also shift to reflect these changing and evolving roles.

These are problems many police departments across the nation are wrestling with, and SPD is poised to capitalize on the proven success of other police departments that we partner with. We will also lead the way in the use of modern data-driven techniques, and adaptability to constantly shifting constitutional and legal standards for law enforcement.

In order to firmly establish the vision for a modernized Seattle Police Department outlined in the 20/20 Plan, I have put in place a cohesive team of leaders who live by those values every day, and demonstrate excellence to their peers. The SPD 20/20 team members, charged with implementing the 20 initiatives, come from every unit and every precinct in SPD. Their experience and established relationships in the department will enable them to lead this effort from the ground up.

At every level our plan is about fundamentally changing the culture of an 1,800-member organization. We know that lasting change in a large organization like our department can only come from within. But it’s not enough to simply write new policies. Writing new policies will not be effective if we don’t have the active participation and buy-in of everyone in SPD, top to bottom. We want every officer walking a beat to demonstrate Seattle’s values, every day.

Our community rightly has high expectations for the officers that patrol the streets of Seattle. In the next 20 months, you will see SPD go above and beyond to meet these high expectations. The cultural change we are working toward will be evident in every neighborhood and every interaction with a Seattle police officer.

The SPD 20/20 plan provides us with a tremendous opportunity to partner with our communities, and change the relationship between our city and its police department. We can settle for making superficial changes that will stick only as long as we have the political will to enforce them, or we can fully commit to creating a new culture of respect for individual and customer service in the Seattle Police Department. Today we are demonstrating that commitment to change, and we invite you to hold us accountable.

My greatest fear is that we could let this opportunity pass us by. It is my responsibility to get this right.

—SPD Assistant Chief Mike Sanford

Posted by: April Thomas

THE READER
From the Office of Mayor Mike McGinn
News, Updates, and Information
Click here to receive this via email.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2012

Making downtown Seattle streets more safe, inviting and vibrant
We’ve been working on the Center City Initiative – a major project focused on public safety in our downtown core.

We started working groups last year in Belltown and Pioneer Square. These groups included every City department that could contribute to solutions: Police, Parks, Human Services, Transportation, Law, City Light and Public Utilities. They also included strong representation from stakeholders in each community. The external stakeholders in each case have helped us define an aggressive work program to address a range of challenges – from public safety and human services concerns, to better lighting, to improved trash, litter and graffiti clean-up.

In the beginning of 2012, we expanded those working groups into a broader Center City Initiative that now includes a working group in the Third Ave and Pike/Pine corridor, as well as in the Chinatown/International District. These working groups have been meeting with community stakeholders to develop work plans for 2012 and beyond.

Read more about the Center City Initiative on the mayor’s blog.

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May is Bike Month
This month is nationally recognized as Bike Month, a celebration of biking, from work and school commutes to errands to recreational riding. Over 20,000 in the region are expected to participate in Bike to Work Day on May 18th and the Commute Challenge motivates new bike commuters all month long.

The video below, “Three stories from the road,” is a nice profile of Seattle area residents working to make cycling safer.

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Free whooping cough booster shots
In response to the ongoing whooping cough (pertussis) epidemic, Public Health – Seattle & King County and Group Health Cooperative are partnering to provide free whooping cough booster shots for adults. Adults without health insurance and those who cannot afford to pay can get a free booster on Saturday, May 12 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Group Health Burien Medical Center (140 SW 146th St, Burien WA, 98116)

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Latino Community Forum with Mayor McGinn
An opportunity for open conversation with the Mayor of Seattle on topics of interest to the Latino community of Seattle.

Saturday, May 19, 2012, 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Beacon Hill International School (2025 14th Ave S)

Spanish interpretation will be provided.

RSVP to Thao Tran (206) 684-4033 or thao.tran@seattle.gov.

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Update on efforts to combat human trafficking
The Mayor sent a letter to the CEO of Village Voice last week demanding the company do more to stop the exploitation of children through its advertising service, Backpage.com. In response, Backpage.com’s lawyer ran an op-ed in the Seattle Times claiming that Backpage was an “ally” in the fight to end the trafficking of children for sex. Just over two days before that op-ed ran, Seattle Police rescued another minor who’d been advertised on Backpage. State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel stood up with Mayor McGinn to decry Backpage.com’s continued denial of their role as an accelerant of the commercial sexual exploitation of youth, and call on them to implement in-person age verification. The same day a letter signed by nearly 50 mayors, including Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, Michael Bloomberg of New York sent a letter affirming the need for in-person age verification. Those mayors will be considering a resolution to that effect at the upcoming meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors.

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Upcoming Events (for more see http://seattle.gov/mayor/Engage/access.htm):

May 11, 7:00 a.m. – Commute Seattle’s Bikes And Bagels, McGraw Square (5th & Stewart)

May 12, 1:00 p.m. – Foster Dog Orientation, Seattle Animal Shelter, Upper Level Conference Room (2061 15th Ave W)

May 14, 6:30 p.m. – First Hill – Park Acquisition Public Meeting, Skyline at First Hill (725 9th Ave)

May 19, 12:30 p.m. – Latino Community Forum, Beacon Hill International School (2025 14th Ave S)

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What we’re reading:
Mayors urge Backpage.com to check ages

A Fundamental Misunderstanding of Parking and Land Use

Developer says won’t tear down Melrose and Pinevue buildings

As parties finalize Seattle arena terms, freight interests seek to slow project

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Posted by: Nathaniel Merrill

Downtown Seattle is the economic engine for the entire region.  It is the center for entertainment, music, food, theater – for Northwest culture.  It offers great shopping from international names to local gems.  Even on a cold, rainy day, you will find people and activity bustling along on city sidewalks.  This is why employers choose to locate in Seattle.  People want to be in a place like this.

But we have work to do.  Like other neighborhoods around the city, downtown is facing some tough challenges.  Some of these are area-specific.  Pioneer Square, for example, lost a lot of retail stores in the first days of the recession and is still working to rebuild a thriving retail core.  Third Avenue is still evolving to better incorporate the flow of high bus volumes.  We continue to work with Belltown to find a healthy balance between a vibrant nightlife scene and the needs of a residential neighborhood.

There are also some challenges common to all of downtown – primarily concerns about public safety and street disorder.  These are not new.  The intersection and concentration of homelessness, mental health needs, chronic inebriation and drug sales and abuse has long been a fact of life downtown and has long created tensions and challenges that the City and other agencies and stakeholders have worked to address.

There are familiar patterns of behavior that have developed.  This includes long established open air drug markets.  The police have had success disrupting these markets, but they tend to move for a while and then work their way back. If you take the time to watch, you will see much of this on display in and out and around the McDonald’s on the corner of 3rd and Pike.  But it’s not just there.  We see it in parts of Belltown.  In Pioneer Square.  In the Chinatown/International District.  It makes people feel uncomfortable and unsafe.  It can lead to violence.

That’s why we started working groups last year in Belltown and Pioneer Square.  These groups included every City department that could contribute to solutions:  Police, Parks, Human Services, Transportation, Law, City Light and Public Utilities.  They also included strong representation from stakeholders in each community.  The external stakeholders in each case have helped us define an aggressive work program to address a range of challenges – from public safety and human services concerns, to better lighting, to improved trash, litter and graffiti clean-up.

In the beginning of 2012, we expanded those working groups into a broader Center City Initiative that now includes a working group in the Third Ave and Pike/Pine corridor, as well as in the Chinatown/International District.  These working groups have been meeting with community stakeholders to develop work plans for 2012 and beyond.

These work plans are based on strong partnerships – partnerships between City departments, between the Mayor and Council, between the City and King County/Metro, with the Downtown Seattle Association and other stakeholders, with the Department of Corrections and the courts.  Strong and sustained partnerships offer our best hope for making real progress.

These challenges have been with us for a long time.  We won’t solve them overnight.  But we are in it for the long haul. Stay tuned for updates; we’ll be informing you of our progress regularly, here on our blog.

Posted by: Mayor Mike McGinn

Mayor Mike McGinn and a group of business leaders endorsed a strategic plan for Seattle City Light today that is designed to guide operations, investments and rates at the municipally owned utility.

“Seattle City Light’s low-cost, reliable electricity is a significant driver for our economy. It’s one of the biggest reasons businesses choose to locate in Seattle,” McGinn said. “This plan enhances the utility’s ability to maintain that vital service, supports necessary investments in the electrical system and outlines the anticipated costs for everyone who pays a City Light bill.”

“Seattle continues to benefit from wise energy decisions our early leaders made to invest in clean, renewable hydroelectric power,” McGinn said. “I support this plan because it ensures that we can reliably carry that legacy forward for the next generation.”

McGinn sends the plan to the City Council tomorrow, May 8.  The Council will spend the next six weeks reviewing the plan. It is likely to come before the full Council sometime in mid-June for a vote. After the plan is adopted, a rate proposal covering only the next two years will be submitted later in the year as part of the budget process. After that, rate decisions will be determined after the strategic plan is reviewed every two years.

“As City Council works with Seattle City Light to adopt a final plan, it is critical that we align our conservation efforts and include new tools to help all our customers better manage their bills, especially low-income households already struggling to make ends meet,” said Councilmember Mike O’Brien, who chairs the Council’s Energy and Environment Committee.

City Light developed the plan after extensive discussions with residential and business customers about what kind of utility they wanted.

“Power reliability is absolutely critical to our scientific operations,” said Scott Rusch, senior vice president of facilities and operations at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. ”Without it we run the risk of losing millions of dollars in life-saving research in the event of a prolonged outage. City Light’s strategic plan features a major investment in the form of a new substation not far from here. The new substation will benefit the Center and the greater Seattle business community.”

If approved, the plan would commit City Light to increasing efficiencies in its operations that could save about $18 million annually, beginning in year three of the plan. It also means building a new substation in the North of Downtown area to support the energy demands created by growing business development throughout the greater Seattle area – the first new substation in 30 years.  And it means putting more investments in infrastructure on a regular basis, similar to City Light’s efforts to regularly trim trees to prevent outages during storm season. The plan spells out the expected rates customers would pay, providing cost predictability business leaders have long sought.

“Before we asked customers to pay more for their electricity, we had to make sure we were operating as efficiently as possible,” City Light Superintendent Jorge Carrasco said. “This plan starts with operational changes that will reduce costs and help us continue to provide some of the lowest rates of any urban utility in the country.”

Seattle City Light is the 10th largest public electric utility in the United States.  It has some of the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to nearly 1 million Seattle area residents.  City Light has been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility in the nation to achieve that distinction.

Posted by: Words: April Thomas, Pictures: Jen Nance

Recently we had the pleasure of a visit to Seattle by Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and a top environment advisor to President Obama. We took the opportunity to show off some of the innovative work Seattle is doing with energy efficiency technologies and infrastructure.

Together we visited Seattle City Light’s Lighting Design Lab. Lighting represents a significant share of potential energy conservation in commercial buildings, and capturing those savings effectively requires expertise in both lighting technology and lighting design.  That’s why Seattle City Light operates the Lighting Design Lab, which works to transform the Northwest lighting market by promoting quality design and energy efficient technologies.

Services of the Lab are available to anyone within the Pacific Northwest working on commercial or industrial lighting projects, including specifiers, architects, interior designers, engineers, contractors, facility managers and building owners.  Lighting Design Lab staff work one-on-one or with groups to discuss and demonstrate possible lighting strategies suited to specific projects.  They are able to assist clients in developing effective lighting schemes, comparing different lighting technologies, and choosing the most appropriate, energy-efficient lighting solutions.

The lab also has a 1200 square foot mockup facility with a movable ceiling so that customers can preview a full scale lighting system before constructing a building or installing a streetlight.

It was an informative visit to the facility, one of those hidden gems of Seattle that has made us a world leader in energy efficiency technologies, and a great opportunity to talk with Chair Sutley about national trends and the President’s priorities for energy efficiency.

Photos by: Jen Nance

Posted by: Aaron Fishbone

THE READER
From the Office of Mayor Mike McGinn
News, Updates, and Information
Click here to receive this via email.

THURSDAY, MAY 3, 2012

Updating the public on May 1st events
On Wednesday, Mayor McGinn and Seattle Police Chief John Diaz gave an overview of the events on May 1st and shared information about 70 weapons that were confiscated from protesters.

“Our priority on May 1st was to protect the safety of demonstrators, bystanders and police officers,” said Mayor McGinn. “Our operational and deployment decisions reflected that priority. And I am happy to report that no peaceful protesters or bystanders were seriously injured. Unlike in the protests last fall, we did not see peaceful protesters getting caught up in physical confrontations between police and extremists.”

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New B&O Tax Deduction for Life Science Research
Working with the life science community, Mayor McGinn proposed an ordinance to allow a business and occupation tax deduction for nonprofit life science community federal fund recipients and subrecipients. The City Council expanded the scope to also include private sector researchers and unanimously passed it earlier this week. This is the first step in a broad effort to review our tax code.

For more information, see the mayor’s blog post.

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Building Bridges for Summer Learning Family Symposium – May 12
Seattle Public Schools is hosting a Building Bridges for Summer Learning Family Symposium on Saturday, May 12 from 9:30-2:30 at Chief Sealth High School (2600 SW Thistle Street). The symposium will include workshops for families to learn practical tools and strategies to support the academic achievement of their students. Interpretation services will be available and light breakfast and lunch will be provided.

For more information, visit the symposium’s web page or contact Bernardo Ruiz at 206-252-0693 or bjruiz@seattleschools.org.

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Seattle hosts Startup Weekend GOV
This past weekend the City of Seattle, King County, and Washington State hosted Startup Weekend GOV here at City Hall, the first Startup Weekend event in the world to focus on using government datasets to build new startups.

During his opening remarks Friday night, Mayor McGinn also announced the Evergreen Apps Challenge, a partnership between Seattle, King County, and Washington State to award over $75,000 in prize money to the top apps in 7 different categories. Apps that are created as part of Startup Weekend GOV will be eligible for the Evergreen Apps Challenge, but it’s open to everyone; prizes will be awarded in early October.

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Council votes unanimously to move toward November vote on seawall
“We’ve taken a critical step toward replacing our deteriorating seawall. The aging seawall is a significant public safety risk. I thank the City Council for working with my office to move this funding package forward,” said Mayor McGinn.

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Upcoming Events (for more see http://seattle.gov/mayor/Engage/access.htm):

May 3: 5:00 p.m. – West Seattle Junction neighborhood town hall with Mayor McGinn, Senior Center of West Seattle (4217 SW Oregon St)

May 4: 2:00 p.m. – Magnuson Park Picnic Shelter Dedication (7400 Sand Point Way NE)

May 8: 5:30 p.m. – Mayor’s Town Hall, Seattle Central Community College Main Cafeteria (1701 Broadway)

May 11: 7:00 a.m. – Bikes & Bagels, McGraw Square (5th & Stewart)

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What we’re reading:
Bauhaus has deal to stay at Melrose and Pine

Many share pain of random killing in Pioneer Square

When bike trains collide, it’s heartwarming

ACLU sues U.S. Border Patrol, alleging illegal traffic stops

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Posted by: Nathaniel Merrill