Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson joins Good Day Seattle

Well, in Seattle, a sales tax increase for expanded bus services is on pace to get the good to go. This morning, overwhelming support coming in from Proposition 1, the Seattle transit measure. That's 73% for and 27% against. If passed, it adds a .15 sales tax increase, adding 15 cents to every $100 spent in Seattle. The funding would expand bus services by nearly 50%. And I'm joined this morning by Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, one of the major boosters of this measure and of course the co-founder of the Seattle Transit Riders Union. Your campaign centered a lot around the transit housing and I bet seeing the results is a good feeling. So what this morning is the biggest get for voters? I mean last night was amazing, right? I mean I think I knew that Seattle supports transit and expected this measure to pass but I did not expect 73% and that number is only going to go up in the days ahead. What we're seeing here is this is going to allow a really major expansion of bus service in our city. That's going to mean that your bus comes more often, is more reliable. And for me, this is really an affordability measure. This is about the line cook being able to get to work reliably, get home to his kids on time, and not have to incur the $12,000 plus expense of a car. Yeah, and so I know you just mentioned support to expand the city bus service by about 47%. We want to ask some of our viewers are asking, have there been. Have there been any studies showing the need for such an expansion of these services? Yeah, I mean, this is really about making transit a viable option for so many more households. And we've seen time and again Seattle voters supporting transit. And when we add service, whether that's to our bus system, whether that's to opening up new light rail stations. Build it and people come. We now have a light rail system that has the highest ridership in the entire country. So I think it's been proven time and time again in our city that people value our transit system and they use it. And they're voting that way. So part of the funds is the Seattle streetcar lines. We have the South Lake Union and the Capitol Hill. The city has been subsidizing those multimillion dollar margins each year. So why continue, especially when those modes are less used? So the first hill streetcar line that goes up to Capitol Hill is actually very used. That's a very, very successful line. We've seen some more challenges with the South Lake Union line, especially just around people working from home and all that. We're seeing progress and I think one of the things that I am really hoping to see in the years ahead is work to get ridership back up on that line. But right now, I believe that continues to be a good investment. So in a perfect Mayor Katie Wilson world, you'll see more lines expanding or just the What do you expect for that as you have a few more years to work on this? So the way the Seattle transit measure works is that we're basically purchasing bus service from King County Metro and it's on lines that already exist. So that means that, again, your bus is gonna come more often, be more reliable. And so it's really about augmenting those lines that people are relying on and using every day. Okay, so then also I know some of the talk about this from riders and viewers is why not just increase the fares? For ridership instead of putting a 0.15 increase to 3.3 and charge people more who are riding it and giving subsidies still to lower income. So fares in our transit system and transit systems around the world are actually a fairly small portion of the revenue. And we know that if you raise fares, then fewer people ride, right? So the way that we get to world-class transit is keeping fares low and improving service, and that's exactly what this measure does. Okay, and so by increasing the fares, and I'm just thinking about this, so you increase the fares and the tax. Everyone's going to be paying that tax, so even the lower income. So that's kind of the question I think that some of the voters are posing who are against it saying, why not just increase it for those who ride it with that maybe They would be paying that tax anyway, but maybe keep where it is so the lower income can maybe ride for free or subsidize. Well, one of the really exciting things about this measure is that it also allows us to expand our free annual transit pass program to serve 22,000 people in Seattle. So that means that many of our lowest income residents are gonna be able to ride for free thanks to this measure. Okay, and so we do wanna ask you, how do you make sure Seattle voters will get their Their money's worth, especially as costs rise in regional prices. Projects like the Ballard Light Rail have kind of been sidestepped, and I know that's kind of a touchy subject for some people, and especially people living in the area who want to use ridership down the road. Right, so I'm also a member of the Sound Transit Board, and that's, you know, our light rail system is kind of a separate agency from King County Metro, but we are getting to Ballard, right? There's obviously our Sound Transit, like transit agencies, local governments around the country is facing funding challenges, but we're going to keep pushing on. We're going to build out that light rail system, and then the thing about this bus service measure is that in the meantime, it allows us to improve bus service to neighborhoods that are still waiting for light rail. Okay. It's a lot to talk about, and for that to develop. We do want to switch gears just slightly, because yesterday you announced a veto of the city council's new rules on RVs and announced your own plan, which includes more outreach. How do you expect that to be different from what the city already does now? And how can you let voters and viewers know that you're working on this? It just wasn't the exact right plan to get them to have to have a permit or it's hard to say when outreach is so broad. Right, and so the executive order that I signed yesterday really has two pieces to it. So one is about the new safe lots that we are standing up. So as part of my shelter acceleration initiative, we actually have an RV safe lot that is going to be opening up later this month and then another one next year. And so this is going to mean that as we're doing outreach to people who are living in their RVs, we'll actually have an option for where they can go so that they're not parked there on a city street in a way that sometimes has serious impacts on our neighborhood. Right, so that is one piece of it. The other piece is really about addressing the most problematic RVs. We know that some RVs are associated with even criminal activity or just from noise to garbage, right, or having real impacts on our neighborhoods. So by creating this pathway to safe lots, that really frees up our police department and some of our other city departments to focus on how do we better address these problematic RVs. And we're creating a work group with our city departments so that we can figure out what are the barriers and how do we overcome them. It kind of parlays into the mental health issue, getting help with that. So there's a lot for you to work on there. Now we do know that transit and housing were a huge part of your campaign. You're almost, We're sort of coming up on a year into this. How are you feeling right now? Because it has been a very busy year here for Mayor Katie Wilson. It has indeed. You know, I'm Honestly, I'm feeling very good. I think with that resounding vote for the Seattle transit measure last night, excited to have painted bus lanes on Denny Way. It makes my heart happy every time someone comes up to me on the street and says thank you for the Denny Way bus lanes because it's just made my commute so much faster. One of the things I'm really proud about in... My work on the Sound Transit Board is getting Graham Street Station into the affordable system plan. So this is a station in southeast Seattle that people have been promised for a very long time. Now it is on track. So really excited about the progress we're making with our transit system. And then housing was excited to champion legislation banning rental junk fees earlier this year to make sure that those hidden fees that as a renter you might not see when you sign your On your lease that landlords can't kind of nickel and dime their tenants that way. And excited that we pulled together a housing production task force to really look at how can we get more housing built in our city from market rate all the way down to low income. Excited by the progress the social housing developer is making. It's acquired two big buildings and has development plans on several plots. So I think we have a lot of work to do, obviously, especially on housing, but excited about the progress we're making. And are you excited? We have to ask you about last night's elections. Major turns went down, the blue wave we've talked about. How do you feel this morning waking up? I'm sure you watched a lot of it like a lot of us did last night, falling asleep to that and seeing what is happening across not only Washington State, but... Across the country. Yeah, I mean, late night last night, and this is just such an important moment for our country, right? I mean, this is a rebuke of right wing authoritarianism. Voters can see through the smoke and mirrors, and it just makes me very, very hopeful. It's really, I think it's an affirmation of Seattle's values, honestly, right? It's an affirmation of democracy. It's an affirmation of inclusion, and yeah, it just makes me really hopeful. Do you see it as working on both sides, even though a blue wave came through before a couple years ago, folks wanted change and we went red. Do you see that now that some Democrats have taken over seats where Republicans were, do you see them working together more across the aisle and reaching together to make us more kind of purple overall in that middle bubble instead of being so far right and so far left? I think what I see is that voters and citizens of our country, we're in a moment where people care about affordability. And I think if you think about two years ago when Trump was elected, that was a big issue in that election. It was really about who did voters trust to lower the cost of living. And then we saw Trump do all kinds of things that actually raised the cost of living, right? From the war to the tariffs. And affordability was a huge issue last year when I was running for mayor. And it's a big issue this year too. They're really looking for results. They're looking at who is going to, who is gonna address these challenges that I'm facing in my daily life. Well, it sounds like there's a lot of work ahead and you have just a little over three years to continue to do that work. So we look forward to progress and seeing changes and non-changes, what's going on in our community and across the country. Mayor Katie Wilson, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you.