Mayor cuts off neighborhood district councils

Mayor Ed Murray’s July 13 executive decision to cut the city’s relationship with the 13 district councils that have been representing Seattle neighborhoods for nearly three decades isn’t sitting well with everyone — particularly longtime district council members.

The district council system was established by the Seattle City Council in 1987, each council representing its neighborhood interests, prioritizing budget objectives, addressing planning programs and coordinating the distribution of Neighborhood Matching Fund grants, among other things.

Murray said his executive order to pull city resources out of the 13 district councils had a lot to do with many of the councils no longer being representative of the neighborhoods they serve, stating he is directing city departments to work with the Department of Neighborhoods to come up with a strategic plan for community engagement and the creation of a new Community Involvement Commission.

The executive order preceded a second report due to the City Council on July 15 from the Department of Neighborhoods, responding to a statement of legislative intent issued last fall, seeking recommendations on how it could better manage its programs and also an analysis of the effectiveness of the 13 councils.

“Who really can argue against equity?” said department director Kathy Nyland in a phone interview with the Capitol Hill Times. “I spoke to a few people who were former district council members about this the other day, and they were supportive of this.”

An actual plan for better engaging the community and forming a community involvement commission still needs to be developed. But Murray said he expects whatever comes next will be more inclusive to immigrants, low-income residents, renters, people of color and youth than the district council system.

Not everyone agrees with the mayor’s assessment.

“They’re just throwing us in the garbage,” said Janis Maloney, 89, who represents the East District Neighborhood Council on the City Neighborhood Council. She’s been with the City Neighborhood Council since it began. “I think they’re taking away from the people that are truly interested in their own neighborhoods.”

Murray’s order doesn’t require the 13 district councils to disband. 

However, they will lose all official support from the city. The city will pull the eight Department of Neighborhoods staffers tasked to work with the councils, as well as any city funding flowing to the volunteer groups. Nyland said those staffers only spent a portion of their time working with the councils, and managers from both the departments of Neighborhoods and Labor will need to sit down with them to determine other ways they can promote community engagement.

“Any organization can exist,” Nyland said, “The district councils do not need to be valued by statute. They can continue to operate. The only thing that changes with this statute is staffing.”

But the district councils’ opinions will lose a great deal of weight in city decision-making. Council opinions will no longer be directly considered by city officials in matters of neighborhood planning or funding.

On July 11, the East District Neighborhood Council prioritized a list of projects proposed for funding through the Neighborhood Parks and Street Fund. Such feedback will eventually fall to the new citywide Community Involvement Commission.

“I don’t think the boundaries of money will change,” Nyland said. “I don’t think we’ll take money from one area and put it toward another.”

Digital engagement via social media and online surveys will be a strong focus as the Department of Neighborhoods moves forward. The approach is intended to address statements by the mayor that many residents don’t have the time or resources to attend various community group meetings.

“[We will use] as many tools as we can wrangle,” Nyland said, “so people can participate on their own timeline.”

The Department of Neighborhoods will spend August conducting civic engagement focus groups, with a Sept. 26 deadline for crafting draft legislation for a new citywide community engagement framework and strategic plan.

Nyland said department leaders hope to implement this new strategy by early 2017. Any members from the 13 district councils can apply to join the new citywide commission, she said, which will be selected in the same manner that focus group and committee members for the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda were chosen.

Troy Meyers said such a comparison doesn’t put him at ease, as he feels developers were given more favor in HALA talks than residents. He thinks cutting ties with district councils will do the same, giving developers more sway with the city than defunded community groups.

Meyers is the secretary for the City Neighborhood Council, and represents both the East District and Central District councils as chairman of the police department’s East Precinct Advisory Council.

“I have very different thoughts, looking at both councils,” he said. “I don’t know what to think about the East District … they cancel about half of their meetings and operate with a focus just on dealing with the city grant process. If they were to go away, I feel like there are other organizations on Capitol Hill that would step in and ensure those things would still happen. In the Central District, I’m much more concerned.”

The Central District Neighborhood Council is more active and diverse, Meyers said, and he worries members and the residents being represented now will be disenfranchised by this new process being proposed by the mayor. Aside from what he heard during the mayor’s streaming press conference, Meyers said there hasn’t been a relay of information to district councils.

“As soon as I finished watching [the press conference], my immediate response was, ‘That was really arrogant,’” Meyers said.

In making his case, Murray pointed to a 2009 city auditor report calling for the resetting of the district council system, as well as a 2013 demographic snapshot of district council attendees, who tended to be white homeowners around 40 years of age or older. 

But more than half of East and Central District council members are renters, Meyers said.

Meyers said the City Neighborhood Council had audited itself a few years ago, even drafting a number of proposed solutions to address the problems cited by the mayor. The city only ever addressed one, he said, and never implemented any of the recommendations.

There are problems with the district council system, Meyers admits, but said the blame lies with the city that established the bylaws and how they operate.

“The true motive here isn’t clear, but it doesn’t really seem about inclusivity,” he said.