State of the City Address
Mayor Greg Nickels
March 6, 2006

Councilmembers and my fellow Seattleites.

I am here today for the fifth time to report that the state of our City of Seattle is strong. We have weathered the storm of the last five years and are prepared to sail with the wind at our back toward a future full of hope and confident that we are headed in the right direction.

As I visit our neighborhoods, I see the faces of our world alive on every street. I see families of every variety. I see the face of Seattle.

Like the infinite diversity of life itself, the diversity of our home is the foundation of our strength. In the life of this city, we have never been stronger.

Overview of accomplishments

The storm we weathered started earlier, but grew to a category 5 on September 11 th 2001. It wiped out 98,000 jobs in Greater Seattle. It forced us to look at our priorities and to cut $120 million from our core budget.

• We faced a California energy crisis that left our rate payers $600 million in debt just to keep the lights on in 2000 & 2001.
• The aftermath of WTO and the tragic death of young Kris Kime on Fat Tuesday, 2001 left our police department demoralized and our public unsure about their safety.
• And an earthquake left us shaken and the Alaskan Way viaduct on its last legs. Record low snow packs threatened our source of clean water and green electricity. 

Today we have replaced many of the jobs lost during those stormy days. We have gone from having the highest unemployment in the US to the highest job numbers in five years. Over 70,000 new jobs have been created in Greater Seattle in the last two years.

We are seeing unprecedented private investment in homes and businesses throughout the city. More permits were issued than at any time since 1998.

City Light has paid off its $300 million of short term Enron notes and we are making progress on bringing down long-term debt and stabilizing electric rates for our ratepayers.

People are confident that our streets are safer and our city more prepared. We are investing in every fire house and in training police and firefighters. We’ve had the lowest back to back years for homicides in over 40 years.

Seattle has become a world beacon in the effort to curb global warming. In 1902 Seattle created the first municipally owned power plant in America at Cedar Falls. Now Seattle City Light is America’s first zero net greenhouse gas emission electric utility.

We started by focusing on four clear priorities: get Seattle moving; keep our neighborhoods safe; create jobs and economic opportunity for all; and build strong families and healthy communities.

And before tackling the bigger challenges we restored confidence in government by taking care of the basics like potholes. (Introduce the Pothole Rangers)

Because of our focus and determination the state of our city is strong.

Our history serves as a guide to the Future

In the life of any city, there are turning points:

• The Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889. We picked ourselves up from the ashes and rebuilt.
• The Century 21 1962 Seattle's World's Fair put Seattle on the map as a city of the future and created the Seattle Center campus and the Space Needle. It promised future transportation would be exciting and fun!
• In 1976, the City Council decided to reject City Light participation in WPPSS nuclear power plants and invested instead in conservation. 

These and other moments were vital for the life of Seattle. Because we made the right choices the state of our city is strong. We’re at another such point now.

Making Seattle more livable in 2006

Every year there are some things we do that get at the details of making our city a great place to live. Often it is the little things that people notice – that tell them someone is taking care of the basics.

A safe place for walking

Seattle has won many awards as a great city for walking. I want Seattle to be the best city for walking safely.

Each year, there are more than 400 accidents involving pedestrians. We need to make our streets safer for walkers.

Last year we began a concerted effort to tackle this problem by launching a pedestrian and driver awareness campaign.

These efforts are working. Accidents injuring pedestrians are down. But we must do more. Last year, the council approved $2.5 million for transportation improvements. I propose that we use a significant portion of that money to finishing fixing the 85 fading or aging crosswalks and traffic signals in our city that pose the greatest threat to our pedestrians this year.

A landscape free from graffiti

Speaking of taking care of the little things, we’ve all heard of the "Broken Windows" theory. It says that you have to pay attention to small crimes, because if you don't, things get worse. There was an old notion that the city didn't have enough time for small crimes. We can't ever think like that again, because if we do our quality of life will deteriorate.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a lot of graffiti around our city.

We need to re-examine this old problem and find creative ways to solve it. What makes graffiti a big deal is its high visibility. That’s why we’re going to educate, and enlist the help of the general public and private property owners to eliminate graffiti and related vandalism.

Here’s how we’re going to do it.

Graffiti-prone locations like I-5 will be identified so that resources can be prioritized to address the problem.

We’re going to attack all graffiti complaints. And we will make it a goal to remove graffiti reported on public property within 48 hours, the same way we address potholes.

We will ask private property owners to clean up their graffiti, quickly, those that fail to do so voluntarily will be subject to city enforcement action. Working together we can win the fight against graffiti.

Keeping our neighborhoods safe

Seattle is one of the safest cities in the nation, but we can do better. While crime overall is low, we have seen a slight increase in some areas like auto thefts, use of guns in assaults and violent assaults. We owe it to the citizens of Seattle to prevent crime and protect our neighborhoods. I thank the council for approving my request to add 25 new officers. Now let’s continue the pledge to keep our neighborhoods safe by adding another eight officers. Together these 33 additional police officers will make a difference. And we’ve done this without raising taxes.

These additional officers mean more eyes and ears on neighborhoods across the city. We rely on the men and women of our police department every day.

It will allow us to put more patrol officers in neighborhoods to combat burglaries, open-air drug dealing and auto thefts – and occasionally pull people from burning buildings!

The road ahead

We focus on the details because they are important to the quality of life in the city. But there are larger, more complex issues today that challenge the future of our city.

We find ourselves at a turning point in education, affordable housing and transportation. If we make the right choices today it will keep Seattle strong for years to come.

The best public schools in America

Seattle kids should have the best public schools in America. I know, it sounds like predicting the Mariners will win the World Series. But it really does matter that our schools are the best.

This year’s high school sophomores must pass the entire WASL test to graduate.

What is most worrisome is that this comes in a year where one in four of these sophomores have failed so many classes that the district is reclassifying them as freshmen. Obviously we face a tremendous challenge.

Fortunately, Governor Gregoire stepped up and proposed $38 million to help high school students throughout Washington who are struggling. The legislature must pass this before they go home on Thursday.

This new State funding is critical to help prepare high school students for success. This summer the City is partnering with the Seattle School District and with our city’s community colleges and universities. We will offer Summer College to 10th and 11th graders. They will not only get WASL preparation, but to experience life on a college campus.

We will set the bar high for every student and then help every student make it over the bar. Give them the tools so they can pass the WASL and open their eyes to the possibility of entering college and the work force with hope for the future.

The School District must overcome significant financial and academic challenges to succeed. The excellent work just completed by the Superintendent's Citizen Advisory Committee offers a sound path for the future. It combines necessary cuts in spending with important investments in academic excellence in the classroom.

I applaud the School Board working to tackle these tough issues. And I encourage them to take a comprehensive approach and resist the temptation to take actions in piecemeal.

Decent, affordable housing for all

Anyone who works hard in our city should be able to afford a decent home in our city.

Seattle is one of the most livable cities but not for those who cannot afford a place to live in our city. We must dramatically increase access to decent, affordable housing. Most of it will be produced, not by government but by the market through private investment.

The Center City plan, the neighborhood business district changes, tax incentives and reforms that reduce the cost of producing housing will make a difference in the ability of our workers to become our neighbors.

We’ve taken the first steps, now I want to make sure that developers throughout the City build housing for families at different income levels in exchange for density increases or other zoning changes. Not just in the downtown area.

In addition to decent affordable housing for our workforce, we have an obligation to those without resource – the homeless. Many of our efforts come as we implement our Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness. I’d like to thank the council for joining with me in supporting this important initiative. The Connections Center we worked on together will open later this year and it will make a difference.

Today, we have far too many homeless people in Seattle and King County emergency shelters, transitional housing and on the streets.

We do a good job helping most transition out of homelessness quickly. But some, perhaps 500-700 people, are chronically homeless -- mentally ill or addicted to alcohol. Many of these are veterans from our nation’s wars.

These are the hard core of homeless in our city. This group represents a small portion of the homeless population. But they consume the largest share of money and resources we devote to helping people out of homelessness.

Let me tell you about Dave, who has lived on our streets for five years. He is 63 years old, but looks like his is 83. He used to drink so much that he would pass out in alleys or, if he was lucky, sleep it off in a sobering center.

His health is gone. Dave has injured himself falling down drunk dozens of times. Each time, he was rushed to Harborview for stitches, Cat-scans and other costly tests and treatments.

In 2004, Dave was the third most expensive chronic alcoholic in King County.

But there is hope for Dave and others like him. The way we get at the problem of chronic homelessness is by focusing on the very hardest cases on our streets today. Why?

It can cost taxpayers a more than 50-thousand dollars a year to provide shelter, food, sobering services, jail and emergency health care to one chronically homeless person who is mentally ill or addicted or both.

Or for about 13-thousand dollars a year, we can house, feed and treat that same person at a center like DESC’s 1811 Eastlake, which opened here in Seattle just three months ago and is home to 75 formerly chronically homeless people, including Dave.

1811 Eastlake represents a new, effective and compassionate direction for helping the chronically homeless. It’s called putting housing first. I ask the council to join with me today in building on this promising effort by approving a proposal to provide housing and services this year for 20 more people who are chronically homeless and struggling with alcohol, drugs or mental illness. We will do this in partnership with the Plymouth Housing Group at its Second & Stewart project.

But that is just a start. I propose we build more housing each year for the people who suffer this way on our streets until all of the chronically homeless in Seattle have the shelter and services they need to live in warmth, safety and hope.

Dave is doing better. He has cut down on his drinking and, for the first time he can recall, wants to get sober. Simply having a home, and people around him who care, has done more to stabilize him than anything else he’s tried.

Providing housing for these individuals will benefit the community. It is effective, it makes financial sense, and, most importantly, it’s the right thing to do.

I thank Plymouth Housing Group and DESC for standing with us to do what is necessary to end homelessness.

But if we are going to end homelessness in King County, it needs to be a shared burden. In Seattle we invest about $43 per capita on providing housing to those in need.

Our good neighbors in Bellevue spend $4.45. That’s not a fair deal. We cannot house the region’s homeless without the region’s support, rhetorical and financial.

For the first time that I can remember the symbolic but important one night count of homeless showed a decrease of 6%. We need to capture this momentum by putting housing first. It’s time our neighbors joined us in walking the talk.

A 21 st century transportation system

Finally, it wouldn’t be a state of the city speech if I didn’t talk about the truly fundamental issue of transportation.

There was another moment in time early in this community’s life, May 23, 1853, when some key decisions about transportation were made that literally shaped the heart of Seattle.

This may come as a surprise, but the discussions about how to lay out the street grid didn’t go smoothly.

Arthur Denny wanted the streets on his land to run parallel to the Elliott Bay shoreline. Doc Maynard thought his street should run directly North and South. The standoff left us with the tangle of roads at Yesler Street that has confused just about everyone for 150 years.

Seattle has suffered its share of confounding decisions. Some we’ve had control over, and some we haven’t.

Since 1995 money to maintain our roads and bridges has been in rapid decline. We’ve lost about 66 percent of our dedicated funding and we’re falling behind on basic street and bridge repair.

To put it mildly, we’re in a bit of a fix. Fortunately, thanks to Councilmember Conlin’s suggestion two years ago to create a Citizen Transportation Advisory Committee we know the extent of the problem.

We now have only a fraction of what we need to maintain our streets and bridges. This year, even though we nearly doubled our paving budget it still isn't enough to keep the backlog at bay. And it isn’t sustainable.

If we don’t find fill the gap, our streets will decay. And when the streets fail, the fabric of our neighborhoods is put at risk.

How many times have you been sitting at an intersection on a dark raining night frustrated because you can't read the street sign? Right now, we can only replace these signs on an emergency basis.

Seattle still has some bridges that are supported by timber posts. The 1938 NE 45th Street Viaduct is one example. Over the years the west portion of this bridge has suffered from rotting timber, settling ground and fires With over 30,000 cars a day using this street, it is time to replace portions of this bridge.

The need is clear for the routine work of paving streets and the bigger projects such as our aging bridges. This funding gap presents both a challenge and an opportunity for our city.

This year I will present to the council a major funding package and ballot measure to meet our pressing street, pedestrian and bicycle needs.

Starting later this month, we will hold a series of community meetings around the city to discuss the challenges we face and gather ideas from the people who use our streets and bridges everyday. Our efforts will make a difference for many years to come.

Let me take a minute to talk about another opportunity that we must seize for our city’s future. It’s one of those choices that mark a generation’s ability to see beyond today.

We have an extraordinary opportunity to make our plans to revitalize the waterfront leap off the drawing boards and into reality.

When the Alaskan Way Viaduct was envisioned in 1949, it was a modern double-decker freeway that replaced a tangle of railroad tracks along the shores of Seattle's working waterfront.

It might have made sense to some at the time to wall off the gritty waterfront from the city with a noisy concrete curtain. Maybe.

So, over 50 years later, we finally have the chance to do the right thing and take our waterfront back for the people of Seattle. But some would argue that we should make the same mistake all over again.

Let me state this plainly: The day of building elevated freeways in the heart of great American cities is dead. We are a city of the future and we will not tolerate a larger and more disruptive new freeway blocking Seattle’s waterfront for another 50 years.

Since the birth of our city, every generation has left its mark and created the Seattle we love.

• Where would we be if City Engineer R. H. Thomson said in the 1890s, we "can't" build a pure, clean water system on the Cedar River?
• If a few years later the Olmsted brothers said, we "can't" build a remarkable parks system?
• Where would we be if civic activist Jim Ellis said we "can't" afford to clean up Lake Washington or build a Metro bus system in the 1960s and '70s?

Taking our waterfront back for the public is vital to attracting new jobs, new families and new opportunities. We cannot afford to wait for the next earthquake to do the job that must be done. Are we going follow the example of previous generations who dreamed of a wonderful city and then built toward it, or miss an opportunity of a lifetime? The answer is clear.

Conclusion

And that is my challenge to you today.

There are moments in the life of a city when people must act with faith in the future and themselves. And that moment is now.

Together, we can address the problems that block our path. We can have schools that give every child the opportunity they need to succeed in life. We can create affordable housing so that everyone who works in Seattle can also live in Seattle and that no one is sleeping on our streets. We can fix the roads and bridges, the sidewalks and bike trails that connect us all to our work, to our home and to each other.

After weathering the storm, we are enjoying our success. Success can foster the strength to conquer problem. Or success can breed complacency. We can glance over our shoulders at the heights we have scaled and proclaim that we’ve reached the high point. Or we can keep our eyes focused on the road ahead, draw strength from all has been accomplished in this city, and say now is the time to build an even stronger Seattle. That is the path I choose.

Thank you and God bless our home, Seattle.