Update: The Seattle City Council unanimously passed the proposed committee assignments on Monday, January 6th and elected M. Lorena González as Council President. The structure detailed below is the final one. Additionally note that Councilmember Andrew Lewis will chair the Select Committee on Homelessness, which lessens the sting of not being tapped for any of the eight standing committees.
Seattle elected four new members to the city council in November and that means a major shakeup in committee assignments. The city council will determine those assignments Monday in its first meeting of the new year.
Councilmember M. Lorena González appears set to be elected Council President and she sponsored the resolution setting committee rosters. If her resolution stands without amendment, Alex Pedersen will chair the Transportation and Utilities Committee, with Dan Strauss as vice chair. Councilmembers Tammy Morales, Lisa Herbold, and González would also sit on transportation committee, and Debora Juarez would be an alternate, barring any changes to the resolution.
Pedersen being tapped for transportation chair did set off some multimodal advocates.
“This is really disappointing,” Robert Cruikshank said in a tweet. “Why hand such a crucial committee to the political outlier–who has a long record of opposing the city’s longstanding transportation policy? We didn’t fight hard to win the 2019 elections for outcomes like this.”
Pedersen snubbed several transportation groups’ questionnaires and endorsements processes—The Urbanist included—and he skipped the candidate forum on transportation policy organized by the Move All Seattle Sustainably (MASS) coalition–of which The Urbanist is a founding member. Pedersen’s platform had several red flags including floating the idea of re-instituting parking minimums in urban villages and transit nodes, where Seattle has waived parking requirements. He also cited the 35th Avenue NE road redesign (also known as the Durkan Speedway) as a model to emulate–even though it’s made the street more dangerous and damaged trust with safe streets advocates.
Broad committee shakeups
The committee shakeup was inevitable given that four of nine councilmembers are new. Three of them–Morales, Strauss, and Andrew Lewis–assumed office this month, and Pedersen was actually sworn in right after election results were certified on November 26th since he was replacing a temporary councilmember (Abel Pacheco) after Rob Johnson resigned before his term was up. Johnson took a job with NHL Seattle planning transportation infrastructure around the new arena.
The committees have been renamed and some have seen their focus altered significantly. Transportation is being paired with “Utilities” whereas under Chair Mike O’Brien it had been dubbed “Sustainability and Transportation.” Previously Seattle’s two public utilities had been split with Seattle Public Utilities nested under Councilmember Herbold’s Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development & Arts Committee and Seattle City Light under Councilmember Mosqueda’s Housing, Health, Energy & Workers’ Rights committee. As of Monday, both utilities are slated to be under Councilmember Pedersen’s committee.
Community Economic Development Committee (3rd Tuesday at 2pm)
- Chair: Tammy Morales
- Vice Chair: Andrew Lewis
- Member: Debora Juarez
- Member: Kshama Sawant
- Member: Alex Pedersen
- Alternate: Lisa Herbold
Finance & Housing Committee (1st and 3rd Tuesdays at 9:30am)
- Chair: Teresa Mosqueda
- Vice Chair: Lisa Herbold
- Member: Lorena González
- Member: Andrew Lewis
- Member: Dan Strauss
- Alternate: Tammy Morales
Governance & Education Committee (2nd Tuesday 2pm)
- Chair: Lorena González
- Vice Chair: Debora Juarez
- Member: Kshama Sawant
- Member: Teresa Mosqueda
- Member: Dan Strauss
- Alternate: Andrew Lewis
Land Use & Neighborhoods Committee (2nd and 4th Wednesday at 9:30am)
- Chair: Dan Strauss
- Vice Chair: Teresa Mosqueda
- Member: Debora Juarez
- Member: Andrew Lewis
- Member: Alex Pedersen
- Alternate: Lorena González
Public Assets & Native Communities Committee (1st Tuesday 2pm)
- Chair: Debora Juarez
- Vice Chair: Alex Pedersen
- Member: Kshama Sawant
- Member: Teresa Mosqueda
- Member: Lisa Herbold
- Alternate: Dan Strauss
Public Safety & Human Services Committee (2nd and 4th Tuesday at 9:30am)
- Chair: Lisa Herbold
- Vice Chair: Lorena González
- Member: Kshama Sawant
- Member: Tammy Morales
- Member: Andrew Lewis
- Alternate: Alex Pedersen
Sustainability & Renters Rights Committee (4th Tuesday 2pm)
- Chair: Kshama Sawant
- Vice Chair: Tammy Morales
- Member: Debora Juarez
- Member: Andrew Lewis
- Member: Alex Pedersen
- Alternate: Teresa Mosqueda
Transportation & Utilities Committee (1st and 3rd Wednesday 9:30am)
- Chair: Alex Pedersen
- Vice Chair: Dan Stauss
- Member: Lorena González
- Member: Lisa Herbold
- Member: Tammy Morales
- Alternate: Debora Juarez
Rumors had been swirling for weeks that Pedersen was going to be transportation chair. Some safe streets advocates pressed for a different selection, but they were rebuffed. Some powerbrokers saw the Transportation and Utilities Committee as a relatively safe space to stash Alex Pedersen, who is the most conservative member of the city council on many issues.
Housing policy avenues
An alternative of putting Pedersen in charge of land use committee seemed even more risky–Strauss got land use chair and the committee appears poised to tackle further zoning reform.
