Seattle Budget Update: Rob Saka Has Questions

About the fate of the police department's horse squad, among other things.

L'il Sebastian, one of the horses that will soon be unemployed under SPD's current budget plan.

By Erica C. Barnett

City Councilmember Rob Saka raised a number of concerns during this week's budget briefings, asking questions no one else thought to ask. Questions like:

• Can we bodega our way out of this?

At least twice this week, Saka asked whether it made sense to encourage "bodegas"—which he defined as "small, locally sourced, organic kind of stores"—when many neighborhoods are losing large grocery stores. "We're not gonna bodega our way out of this," Saka said during a presentation by the city's Department of Construction and Inspections. He repeated the quip at a presentation by the Office of Sustainability and Environment, adding that in his West Seattle district alone, "we can expect to lose at least two grocery stores, big grocery stores. They're on the chopping block as the result of a proposed merger" between Albertson's and Kroger.

The city (unlike federal regulators) can't do much to impact the decisions of national corporations, but they do have the power to support or oppose land-use policies that make it easier to build small grocery stores as part of the upcoming comprehensive plan update; currently, as we've reported, the mayor's proposal would once again make corner stores legal, but only on literal corner lots—a proposal unlikely to make much dent in the existing food deserts in Saka's West Seattle district and other parts of the city.

• Speeding cameras that "just send you a ticket in the mail": Y/N?

Saka, who chairs the council's transportation committee, raised objections this week to speed enforcement cameras in school zones, saying he was "default skeptical of of enforcement cameras that have the capability to just send you a ticket in the mail. I don't support wide-scale mass deployment of those." The city has slowly rolled out speed  cameras at 19 schools over the last decade, and funded new cameras in 18 additional school zones last year.

School zone cameras have proven to be an effective deterrent to speeding in school zones, which in turns reduces collisions between cars and pedestrians, including school children, around schools.

"Rather than having these cameras as a revenue-generating tool only ... I think our approach needs to be guided by data," Saka said, adding that he worried the city was targeting  "historically marginalized and underrepresented" communities with the cameras.

"We are being asked to to review and approve a substantial decision, a significant decision, a policy choice, regarding automated enforcement in our city. And is this the appropriate balance and deployment of these cameras relative to the other potential uses that we talked about? I don't know. I don't know."

As The Urbanist reported in 2023, the new cameras will primarily be deployed in more affluent parts of the city.

Saka has been a vocal supporter of a different use of camera technology—live police surveillance cameras, which will be used to keep constant tabs on crime "hot spots" like Aurora Ave. N, downtown, and the Chinatown/International District. In fact, he added an amendment to the CCTV surveillance bill last month to put Alki and Harbor Aves. SW next in line for cameras to deter street races.

• Should horses be cops?

The Seattle Police Department has proposed cutting the police department's mounted patrol, which includes a half-dozen horses, and moving mounted officers to other duties; in a presentation to the council, SPD Chief Sue Rahr explained that the decision to eliminate SPD's small mounted patrol was "a decision that has been in the making for more than a decade."

Saka argued that the mounted patrol plays a vital "community engagement role," then suggested SPD's decision might not be final—"maybe it is, maybe it isn't"—before returning to the horses at the end of the meeting, when he took the time to recite each of their names out loud, like an In Memoriam segment at the Oscars.

"Callum, Blue, Change, Sebastian, Doobie, and how can I not forget the two lovable barn cats, Sully and Katy Perry," Saka said. "So there's real-life animals behind the impact of the decision." He then added the names of the "impacted officers," calling them "real-life people... that are directly impacted." The horses will go to other owners, the police officers, unlike 76 other real-life people who will lose their jobs under Harrell's budget proposal, will be reassigned to other duties.