I Won’t Budge(t) on Our Shared Values
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Another budget season began last Monday when the Mayor transmitted her proposed 2020 budget. Team Teresa is hard at work learning about the changes and ensuring our priorities are reflected. In other words – let’s put our money where our mouth is. Here’s what we’re prioritizing this year:
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Supporting working families
Supporting working families means developing strong policy AND being there when the ink is dry. This year, we’ll make sure that we have strong outreach, education, and enforcement on our City’s labor standards and that we adequately fund those programs. We’ll be building towards the future of work and making sure that we have the training and support for our workforce to continue union, living wage jobs and that city dollars go to entities and projects that carry labor standards such as prevailing wage, project labor agreements, and worker retention plans. Supporting working families doesn’t stop at the worker themselves – we need to think holistically about families in our city. I’ll be working to ensure families have stable, local, and affordable childcare and that education programs across the city promote equity.
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Creating affordable homes
We need every resource at our disposal to address the husing and homelessness crises our communities are experiencing. I sponsored legislation enabling Seattle to move forward with a new resource granted by state legislators this year through HB 1406—thanks to Representatives Nicole Macri and June Robinson—which provides cities and counties with access to additional revenue for affordable housing, without raising taxes. Combined with the proceeds from the Mercer Mega Block sale and new state authorization to use real estate excise tax dollars for affordable housing, these new dollars will help ramp up our commitment to affordable housing through this budget—and one of my biggest priorities will be to leverage every dollar possible to create deeply affordable homes for our lowest-income neighbors and those recovering from homelessness.
As we invest in affordable homes and create more opportunities for community-driven development throughout the city, I’ll be pushing to make sure these investments support affordable housing providers and community groups who are working together to reflect, root, and strengthen communities most impacted by displacement, promote opportunities for small businesses, childcare facilities, health clinics, public spaces and playgrounds, preserve and invest in cultural hubs, and make sure we have strong protections for workers so that those who are building our housing can also afford to live in our city.
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Promoting healthy communities
Seattle has been in a homelessness state of emergency since 2015, and since then, we have only seen the number of people experiencing homelessness increase. Our current homelessness crisis is a public health emergency, and we must treat it as such. We know housing is the answer, but while we build permanent housing, we must maximize our investments in 24-hour enhanced shelters, in wrap-around services, and hygiene stations. This is a multi-faceted crisis that requires meaningful action and change—that’s why I’m excited about our regional approach work with King County, the Sound Cities, and the City of Seattle. We must work collaboratively to prevent homelessness, and ensure existing programs can keep up with the need.
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Building for our future
This budget cycle, I’ll be looking towards our city’s present and our future. A thriving city means healthy, easy to access business districts and diverse small businesses. One of the most frequent concerns I hear from small businesses is the city’s permitting systems – from delays to duplication. I’ll be working on budget priorities to figure out solutions to these concerns.
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Promoting a Blue/Green New Economy
I was proud to stand with community groups, labor unions and workers, the nearly 200 community organizations, community leaders, local businesses, and Councilmember Mike O’Brien, who are calling for a green just-future and pushing for a Green New Deal in Seattle. On August 12th, the City Council passed a Green New Deal Resolution, affirming our commitment to addressing the climate crisis and transitioning to a fairer, more just economy for frontline workers and fence-line communities. This bill sets us up for action on job training and strong labor protections to ensure union jobs and economic/racial justice are at the center of the green economy we’re striving towards; more investments in transportation infrastructure, dense affordable housing and updated our zoning laws to create more housing options, and investments in renewable energy to decarbonize our economy.
On September 16th, the City Council passed a Green New Deal Ordinance, establishing a Green New Deal Oversight Committee. Working with my Council colleagues, I supported amendments to increase the number of committee seats dedicated to union and workforce representatives to ensure the voices, values, and needs of our labor partners are strongly reflected in these efforts. My team and I will be tracking these intersectional Green New Deal issue areas during the budget process to make sure we’re protecting frontline workers and fenceline residents, including making sure training dollars are priorities for good union jobs.
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Realizing Our Disposition Vision
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In other superb policy passage news, yesterday the City Council also approved the (no-cost!) transfer of two underutilized, surplus City Light properties to the Office of Housing for the creation of affordable homes! These transfers are the result of groundwork laid by the advocacy and ideas of the housing community, the leadership of state legislators who authorized this type of transfer, and legislation I sponsored last year making Seattle the first city to adopt express state authority to use surplus publicly-owned property at below-market value for affordable housing and community-driven development.
With the passage of yesterday’s legislation, Seattle is now also the first to effectuate the intent to build housing on surplus land, ensuring that public property truly benefits the public. Building housing on publicly-owned, underutilized property can help us create affordable housing faster and at about 15% lower cost. These sites are in high-opportunity areas and sitting vacant and unused—now they will soon be the site of permanently affordable homeownership opportunities for families in Seattle. Woo-to-the-hoo!!
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Yesterday, the City Council passed legislation I co-sponsored with Councilmember Lisa Herbold to make emergency payment assistance more accessible to utility customers and align the City Light and Seattle Public Utilities assistance programs. This effort was initiated during as part of last year’s budget through a Statement of Legislative Intent co-sponsored by myself and Councilmember Herbold, which requested recommendations from City Light and Seattle Public Utilities to improve and increase enrollment in the Utility Discount Program and other assistance for low-income customers households in Seattle. The two departments have been working together and returned with recommendations to expand and streamline access to emergency assistance for utility bills. Highlights of this legislation include:
- Extending eligibility to more people by raising the qualifying income level from 70% of the Area Median Income to 80% of the Area Median Income.
- Increasing the number of times per year emergency is available to families with children from once per year to twice per year.
- Increasing the maximum credit from 50% of the bill to 100% of the bill up to $200.
We hear of customers having to make the hard choice between paying for utility bills and paying for other life necessities like groceries or rent, or things like student loan bills. This legislation will help expend support for low-income customers during these emergency situations—and is part of a suite of actions we’re taking to better serve low-income utility customers.
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I’ll (Parental) Leave You with a Few Thoughts
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This will be my last Teresa Tuesday before I head out on parental leave to spend time with my little one. My team will be hard at work and will continue to send out #TeresaTuesdays (and we’ll be sure to let you know when Baby Girl Valdes-Mosqueda arrives!). Before I leave, I wanted to share a few thoughts about pregnancy and early-childhood parenting:
I feel fortunate to have good health insurance through my employer and to have hard-working and caring union medical staff help me through this pregnancy. I also know that not everyone has access to quality healthcare and that the people who don’t are frequently people of color, immigrants and refugees, and lower-income women. Women of color also frequently have worse health outcomes during pregnancy regardless of income. African-American women are 60% more likely to experience pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, are three-four times more likely to die from childbirth, and black infants in the U.S. are more than twice as likely to die as white infants. I’ll be working next year to develop local, regional, and statewide healthcare safety nets.
I’m excited to have a few months to spend time with my growing family – and starting next year, all workers have access to 12 weeks of paid leave within the first 12 months of having/adopting a baby. Studies show time off with your child early promotes lifelong health, educational and emotional outcomes. And I’m thankful to all of you who helped fight for statewide paid family and medical leave that goes into place early next year. While we have the strongest statewide paid parental leave in Washington, there’s more work to do. Across the country, many Americans don’t have paid time off after delivery or adoption of a child. One hundred ninety (190) member nations of the United Nations have paid parental leave. The lack of a national policy in the U.S. is an embarrassment and bad for our workers, our children, population health, and economic well-being.
Yesterday, I introduced and the council unanimously voted on an Infants at Work Resolution. The resolution requests the Mayor design a pilot program to allow city employees to bring infants to work. The resolution considers alternates for employees who are not able to bring children to work and asks for cultural competent policies, training and infrastructure support. In passing this resolution, Seattle follows the lead of our state Department of Health and King County, as well as hundreds of governmental entities, businesses and non-profits across the country who have adopted similar policies. Thank you to Mom’s Rising, PROTEC17, MLK Labor, Civic Ventures, Working Washington and the Fair Work Center, the Seattle Police Officers Guild , King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski and his staff Kristina Logsdon and Elizabeth Evans, and the Women’s Commission for your guidance and support.
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Seattle is a childcare desert. It's no secret that childcare in Seattle and King County is expensive and hard to find. Waitlists for childcare are long, parents frequently have to commute long distances, and pay large percentages of their paychecks for childcare. Meanwhile, providers experience low incomes, resulting in high turnover, the inability to live in the city in which they work, and increasing equity disparities. I’ve worked on increasing standards for nannies and other domestic workers, increasing childcare capacity through space at city hall , adding childcare space the City’s Mercer Megablock development, and added training for childcare providers in the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise levy. I’ll continue working with businesses, labor, parents, and more to ensure we have more childcare space, better wages and benefits for providers, more affordable childcare options.
Child Care Resources is a local non-profit that provides tools and information to aid in child care search, share what quality child care looks like and even offers guidance about paying for childcare. To get a customized list of licensed child care providers that meet your child's unique needs and your family’s values, culture, work schedule, call the CCR Family Center at 206-329-5544 (1-800-440-1114). If you call the Family Center, you will speak with a resource specialist who can provide referrals tailored to your family’s needs and answer your questions about child care. Or you can go on line to https://childcareawarewa.org/families/ to find child care options and educational information. These services are free for all families. If you are like me, you are looking for all available resources in the community, and this can help navigate the childcare desert we face in Seattle—while we fight for childcare in City buildings and around Seattle and access to higher wages for all childcare providers!
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Team Teresa is here to serve (your pun, policy, and people needs alike!)—let us know how we can help.
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Hasta la Victoria Siempre!
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Teresa Mosqueda
Seattle City Council Councilmember, Position 8
teresa.mosqueda@seattle.gov
206-684-8806
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