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Sunday, November 7th - Saturday, November 13th, 2021
In brief: City Council Budget Committee chair Teresa Mosqueda released her initial package of amendments to Mayor Durkan's proposed 2022 budget; Governor Inslee appointed Democratic state Senator Steve Hobbs to replace outgoing Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman; Seattle Public Schools canceled Friday classes due to a shortage of available staff; and the University Street bridge, as of press time, has been stuck open since Friday morning, with no estimate for when it'll be fixed.
COVID-19 News
For current stats, see the following:
To book a free vaccine appointment, click here for the City of Seattle vaccine clinics or here for the state's vaccine appointment locator. 
As of the end of October (the most recent complete data from the state), new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths were all declining but still at high levels--they're meaningfully below the all-time high from September, and now slightly lower than the pre-Delta peak at beginning of the year. [Seattle Times, Q13 FOX, KING 5]

The U.S.-Canadian border reopened to Canadians traveling to the U.S., although Canada's requirement of a costly COVID test (which can cost $200-300) in order to re-enter the country is likely to deter many casual cross-border trips. [Seattle Times, KING 5]
The 2022 Budget
City Council Budget Committee chair Teresa Mosqueda released her initial package of amendments to Mayor Durkan's proposed 2022 budget, which the City Council will discuss this upcoming week and finalize on Monday, November 22nd with the passage of next year's budget. [Seattle City Council Insight, The Urbanist]

Mosqueda's proposed budget would invest $192 million into building or acquiring affordable housing and $50 million into mental and behavioral health services--and it would also reduce SPD's budget by about $8 million in 2022 vs. 2021, rather than the roughly $3 million year-over-year increase in Mayor Durkan's proposed budget.

Mayor Durkan and Mayor-Elect Harrell both called on the council to reverse the funding cuts, with Harrell invoking the election results as proof that Seattle voters had "unambiguously rejected defunding the police." Nikkita Oliver, meanwhile, reminded participants in a Solidarity Budget meeting that the two police abolitionist candidates who were on the ballot, themself and Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, got 46% and 47% of the vote in their respective races. 
Election Wrap-up 2021
As of Tuesday (a week after Election Day), with virtually no ballots left to count, Lorena González had gained 12.1%, Nikkita Oliver had gained 12.9%, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy had gained 13.5%, and Teresa Mosqueda had gained 13.9% from their initial results on Election Day, cementing a recent trend of large gains by progressive candidates in the days following the initial ballot drop. The three candidates who were behind on Election Night still ended up losing in the end, though--González by 17.5%, Oliver by 7.9%, and Thomas-Kennedy by 3.8% (as of Friday, 11/12). Mosqueda's margin of victory is now 19.2%. [Seattle Times, MyNorthwest, The Urbanist, results.wa.gov]

Bruce Harrell's margin against González was the largest margin of victory in a meaningfully contested mayor's race in more than two decades; and voter turnout in Seattle was 54%, which is extremely low compared to our 90%+ turnout in the last presidential race but amazing compared to off-year local elections in most cities (New York's national-news-generating mayor's race this year saw less than 20% turnout). [Seattle Times]

Political consultant Ben Anderstone created four maps to show the levels of support for each candidate by geography, color-coding each precinct in the city based on the percentage of the vote the moderate (green) and progressive (yellow) candidates received. [Facebook, KUOW]

In retrospect, it turns out that the Crosscut/Elway poll from September was surprisingly accurate in that it successfully predicted the final margins in each race to within the poll's 5-point margin of error; while the Change Research poll from mid-October was decidedly less so. 

The special-election recall vote against Kshama Sawant, in which only District 3 residents will be able to vote, is set for December 7th. If you live in District 3, be sure to vote! Ballots will go out in the mail this Wednesday; if you want to hear more from the two sides, you can watch a recent debate between Sawant and the campaign manager for the recall election in full here, or read a recap of it here. 
Meanwhile, in Olympia
Governor Inslee appointed moderate Democratic state Senator Steve Hobbs (and, as the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, longtime foil to Inslee's climate change agenda) to replace outgoing Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman, who's resigning one year into her current term to take a position with the Biden administration helping to oversee election security. There will be a special election next November to choose a new Secretary of State to serve out the last two years of Wyman's original term. [Seattle Times, The Urbanist, The Stranger, Crosscut, KNKX]

The state Supreme Court ruled that Inslee's line-item veto of a single sentence in a transportation bill from 2019 exceeded his constitutional authority, foreshadowing a similar lawsuit over a climate-change bill that he vetoed part of this spring (to prevent its implementation from being tied to the passage of a highway-centric transportation bill championed by Senator Hobbs). [Seattle Times, MyNorthwest, KNKX]

While Governor Inslee was at the UN's COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, he signed an executive order that will require the state's vehicle fleet to be 100% electric by 2040 (with light-duty vehicles required to complete the transition by 2035). [Seattle Times, MyNorthwest, GeekWire]

And far-right Republican state Senator Doug Ericksen, who's been vocally opposed to Governor Inslee's vaccine mandates and in 2018 was paid by the authoritarian government of Cambodia to observe their widely condemned elections and praise their openness and fairness, suddenly popped into headlines when he revealed that he's in El Salvador (which just saw its authoritarian leader win control of the legislature in November's election) with a bad case of COVID and pleaded with his colleagues in the state legislature to send him monoclonal antibody treatments. [Seattle Times, KIRO 7]
Real Estate Corner
Seattle Met had a good run-down of the many new tenant protection laws that the City Council has passed this year. 

An upcoming mixed-use commercial and luxury residential apartment tower project on Denny between Stewart and Virginia will incorporate a repurposed 747 fuselage suspended 14 feet off the ground as part of its office space. [Seattle Times]

As part of its retreat from the iBuying space, Zillow reached a deal to sell 2,000 of the more than 17,000 houses it's going to need to unload in the coming quarters to an institutional investor who will operate them as rentals. It's unclear how many of the rest of the homes that Zillow owns or is under contract to buy will be listed for sale to the public as originally planned vs. marketed directly to institutional investors. [Wall Street Journal, GeekWire]

And David Kroman looked at the brewing showdown over the 2024 update to the city's Comprehensive Plan, with battle lines being drawn around the issue of whether or not to allow greater density in areas that are currently zoned for single-family houses only. [Crosscut]
Thank you to everyone who's sent me a real estate referral or used me as an agent yourself! The city of Seattle is my geographic area of expertise, and while I'm also very good at helping sellers get top dollar for their homes, my true passion is helping first-time homebuyers get homes that they love quickly and easily.

If you need a residential real estate agent to help you buy or sell a home of any kind--or you know someone who does--I'd love to be of service. My website is here, or see here for client reviews. 
Other News
Seattle Public Schools announced Tuesday that there would be no classes on Friday after more than 600 teachers requested leave for that day (Veterans Day, a federal holiday, was Thursday), attributing the high levels of requested leave to staff fatigue and a shortage of substitute teachers. [KUOW, Seattle Times]

Boeing accepted sole liability in court for the deaths of the 157 people who died in its 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia, and will now proceed to work out individualized compensation plans for the families of each of the victims; and the FAA notified Boeing that many of the safety engineers the company appointed to oversee its airplane certification work are unqualified for the job, after management offered early retirement packages to many senior safety engineers during the pandemic as a way to save money. 

Opponents of the state's upcoming long-term care payroll tax filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to stop its implementation before it goes into effect in January. [KNKX]

Tomorrow is the deadline for the state's bipartisan four-member redistricting commission to finalize the new congressional and legislative district maps that will be in place for the next 10 years. If they're unable to do so, the task will fall to the state Supreme Court instead. [Seattle Times]

Gene Balk did some extrapolation from the U.S. Census data to map the percentage of respondents in every Census block in King County who fall into the category that includes people experiencing homelessness (as well as people living in adult group homes or residential treatment centers). [Seattle Times]

100 Ballard High School students walked out of class on Monday to protest the school's policies regarding sexual misconduct and harassment; and a Ballard High investigation found that the principal of the school had retaliated against a student by reassigning him to a different teacher's class after he and his parents questioned whether an assignment by his English teacher was racist. 

"Two Seattle residents have been charged with stealing more than $1 million in jobless benefits and federal small business loans during the pandemic," and unrelated scammers defrauded the City to the tune of $831,062 this summer by posing as the homelessness nonprofit Mary's Place. 

A group of tribes and environmental non-profits reached out to the organization that certifies environmentally friendly hydroelectric providers in an attempt to have them remove Seattle City Light's certification, stepping up their multi-pronged pressure campaign against the utility to try to force it to upgrade its dams on the Skagit River to include fish passage for salmon. [KING 5]

Seattle Times Amazon reporter Katherine Anne Long announcing that she's leaving to cover Amazon for Business Insider; Crosscut's David Kroman announced that he'll be leaving Crosscut to join the Seattle Times as a transportation reporter at the end of the month; and controversial Q13 FOX reporter Brandi Kruse announced that she quit her job in the "corporate media" to start a Patreon-based short-video-segment service called [un]Divided instead. 

The southbound lanes of the new Alaskan Way--which will eventually be an 8-lane surface highway along much of the waterfront once construction is finished around 2023--will open to the public between South Main Street and South King Street tomorrow. [KING 5]

And as of press time the University Street bridge has been stuck open since Friday morning due to an electrical issue, with no estimate from SDOT for when it'll be fixed. [KING 5]
Ending on a high note
Eater Seattle has some tips on where to order takeout Thanksgiving dinner this year if you don't feel like cooking, including the option to purchase a Thanksgiving dinner kit directly from the Duwamish Tribe (with proceeds benefiting the Duwamish Longhouse and Chief Seattle Club). 

And here are a bunch of photos of cute little bunny rabbits--you won't believe #36!!

Sol Villarreal
Broker, Windermere Real Estate
sol@windermere.com
solvillarreal.com
206-765-6108
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