It took over three hours of debate in the Seattle City Council’s Select Committee on Seattle Transportation Benefit District, a slew of dumb amendments, a few good amendments, and sitting through Committee Chair Rob Saka’s tortured pronunciation of the word “machete,” but the Seattle Transit Measure (STM) is intact and headed to a full council vote next week. If it passes, the measure will go to the voters this August.
Wilson’s proposal will bump up the sales tax collected by the STM to 0.3 percent—a 0.15 percent increase over the STM passed in 2020—and extend its lifespan from six years to 10 years. With that increase, the measure would bring in $138 million annually and increase bus service in Seattle by 100,000 bus trips. The majority of that money will go towards the added bus service. STM funds will also go towards the city’s struggling streetcar lines, transit access programs, and capital projects to make transit speedier. (The 2020 STM aided projects like the RapidRide J Line and the Rainier Ave South Bus Lane Project.)
The measure emerged from the meeting virtually unscathed, but the process to get there was excruciating. I never want to hear Rob Saka speak again.
The first sign of a terrible meeting ahead: The council proposed a mess of over 20 amendments. Several would have pared back Wilson’s STM by reducing the sales tax increase or reducing the measure’s lifespan, and others undercut the main priority of funding transit by steering the money towards things like security on buses. One amendment literally allowed the City to take any unspent funds for transit service and apply them elsewhere.
The second sign of a terrible meeting ahead: Saka is chair of the committee. He enjoyed, as he gleefully said, “Chair privilege!” and interrupted staffers and council members to opine, or have the last word, or just monologue.
While introducing his amendment to direct STM revenues to security measures recommended by the King County Regional Transit Safety Task Force, Saka explained in detail all the crime that’s happened on buses, like the man who tried to board a bus with a machete—or, as Saka pronounced it over and over, “Ma-cheh-TEE.”
“Is this a banana republic?” he asked in the middle of his 10-minute speech.
Saka’s amendment is pretty stupid, for several reasons. Seattle does not manage the buses. That’s King County’s job. The city purchases bus service from King County Metro, and those service hours already include safety and security services from Metro, central staff explained. Plus, there’s another $9 million already earmarked in the Seattle Transportation Levy for safety.
If that wasn’t enough, the safety recommendations from the King County Regional Transit Safety Task Force that Seattle can do anything about have already been satisfied. And he should know that because central staff told him at a committee meeting earlier this month that there was only one recommendation in Seattle’s jurisdiction—a Seattle Department of Transportation workforce development program for youth—and it was already underway.
After a long discussion from multiple council members on this topic, Saka offered a closing thought in the form of another long-ass monologue:
“I’m a regular transit rider and proud of it,” he said. “This other day in the back of the bus a gentleman, probably suffering from a behavioral health challenge of some sort, a crisis situation, bare cheeks all out, exposed, sprawled out all over the back seat smoking on some unknown substance—I don’t know what fentanyl smells like, but as soon as I saw what he did was doing, I got up and moved a couple seats forward, so I don’t have to ingest that stuff…” His point? “Being on the bus, riding the bus daily, I’ve seen many incidents like that. I’ve seen people stripping copper wire in the back of the bus openly, unashamed, unapologetically.”
“Look, I’ve got a high tolerance for that kind of stuff,” Saka said. “I’m built a little differently, but not everyone who has a choice to ride transit has a similarly thick skin… [Safety and security] ain’t flashy. It’s not sexy for some, but it is a mission-critical thing we can do.”
“I’d like to call the question,” Councilmember Dan Strauss interrupted, calling a vote to stop Saka.
“Second,” Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck said immediately.
Nobody spoke. Saka sat in stunned silence: “Oh.”
A member of central staff interjected, “to call the question is to end debate. If two thirds of members agree, then the council will then proceed with a vote.”
“Let’s just do that,” Saka said. “Let’s do that.”
The motion passed 6-3, with Councilmembers Bob Kettle, Maritza Rivera, and Saka voting against shutting Saka up.
Then, after he was silenced, the council voted on Saka’s safety and security amendment. It passed 7-2 with Rinck and Dionne Foster as the only no votes.
Two terrible amendments that would severely limit the STM also failed.
The first was Saka’s amendment to reduce the lifespan of the measure from the proposed 10 years down to seven years, which would limit how long the city can use and collect that higher sales tax.
“A shorter term will give the city a more imminent opportunity to recalibrate after evaluating ridership trends and to revisit the funding mechanism to ensure fairness and efficacy,” Saka said. The rest of the council—save Kettle—did not agree. The amendment failed 7-2.
While introducing his amendment to cut the sales tax collected by the measure from 0.3 percent to 0.255 percent, Kettle rambled on about affordability.
“I just want to state quite clearly, I support public transit,” Kettle said before listing all the public transit he’s taken: trains in Russia, Germany, France, England, DC, and the T in Boston. He gets that transit is important, he said. But not as important as affordability.
“We need to look at affordability holistically by understanding what is happening with property tax, sales tax, utility rates, this combination,” Kettle said. No one, he asserted, is looking at what’s going on with state, county, and city taxes. “Good governance is important.”
Last year Kettle sponsored a bill that raised the sales tax by 0.1 percent to fund public safety when the police budget was over $451 million.
Rivera, who co-sponsored Kettle’s bill, chimed in defensively with her support.
“What I don’t want to be said is that we do not support transit. I very much… definitely 100 percent support public transit,” Rivera said as she launched into an argument for why the council should approve an amendment that would crater bus service. Her reason? Affordability, of course.
Just like Kettle, her concerns about affordability trumped her supposed love of transit.
To check Kettle’s and Rivera’s hand-wringing, Rinck said the amendment “would save the average household $1 a month in exchange for 100,000 fewer bus hours.” You know what else is expensive? Owning a car, she said. Kettle’s amendment failed 7-2.
The final package includes funding for night bus service, an expansion of the transit access program for trade school students, and transit investments in the neighborhoods identified in the Comprehensive Plan as hubs for growth, jobs, and services, including Downtown, Northgate, Lower Queen Anne Uptown, South Lake Union, Ballard, Capitol Hill, First Hill, and the University District.
The package heads to full council for a vote on Monday July 21.
