Local gov’t has surrendered and abandoned various parts of Seattle

Yep, it’s another one of those posts.

It really does seem like local governments have found it easier and more cost effective to surrender and abandon certain neighborhoods of concentrated anti-social behavior rather than figure out solutions to these massive problems.

Solutions to massive problems require political capital and intervention from larger government bodies (county, state, federal). Individual councilmembers aren’t eager to focus their attention on a problem that they inherently know that they neither have the political capital nor savvy and skill to work with larger agencies to solve.

My brief interactions and work with councilmembers convinced me that they’re focused only on collecting “quick wins” that they can qualify and quantify for the purposes of getting reelected. Saka himself wanted to be known as the “pot hole guy” because it’ll be something he can quantify and brag about when he eventually seeks reelection.

Homelessness, open-air drug markets, and the fentnyl crisis are NOT quick wins for local politicians.

Local politicians know that they cannot solve these kinds of larger problems within one election cycle, and as such it’s not worth exploring. Much easier and politically safer for them to ignore. Otherwise, they’ll look more incompetent than they already do for claiming that they’re going to solve or even address a problem but don’t have any results to show for it come time for their reelection.