public commenters (including “Nara Selson”) excoriate Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Rob Saka for missing the Renter’s Commission last week and preventing quorum

Last week, Sara Nelson and Rob Saka missed the meeting that was scheduled to appoint new members to the Seattle Renter’s Commission, which meant the meeting couldn’t achieve forum and couldn’t make the appointment. After a bout of negative press, the City Council announced that yesterday’s (7/29) City Council meeting would set aside time to appoint members to the Commission.

Despite the good news that the appointments were finally happening yesterday, more than half of the public commenters who signed up were there to criticize Nelson and Saka not just for the fact that they missed the meeting, but that they declined to give any reason. It looked especially suspicious that they both missed the meeting, since both of them had said on record they did not want the appointments to happen. Several commenters made the point that it wasn’t just about last week’s meeting but about the fact that the City Council hadn’t filled the appointments to the Renter’s Commission any time in the last 18 months.

The public commenters are at the beginning of the meeting video (intermixed with the other public commenters talking about other things):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz7a3Q-DHWk

“Nara Selson, Sara’s progressive twin” speaks at 9:15: “I challenge Council President Nelson to tell the public why there was no action on appointing people to the Renter’s Commission while you have been Council President. And I also challenge both you and Councilmember Saka why you chose not to go to your job last week.”

(If you recognize “Nara Selson”, I believe that’s her twin brother cracking up in the background while Saint Rat gave public comment two weeks ago.)

I was far more restrained than some people (I’m at 12:40) but I said, basically, that there could be an innocent explanation, but it was incumbent on them to provide it, right up to the boundary of not wanting to pry into information about medical or family emergencies. Basically, at a normal job, if you ask for a day off three weeks in advance, you don’t need to explain it, but if you announce at the last minute that you’re taking the day off and you know there’s a meeting happening where dozens of people need you to be there, you owe people an explanation. (Saka did earlier this week say it was a “family issue”, so that’s arguably consistent with what I was asking for; Nelson has so far said nothing, and probably never will, now that the appointments are filled and people probably want to move on.)

People said too much to transcribe it all here, but at 14:55 Kate Rubin testified, who is the co-chair of the Seattle Renter’s Commission that has been waiting on the appointments to be filled, and this is what she said:

“Hello, my name is Kate Rubin, I’m a renter living in Beacon Hill, and I am currently serving as the interim co-chair of the Seattle Renter’s Commission, one of five members who’s been serving by ourselves for the last 18 months. I also serve as the co-executive director of Be:Seattle, an organization that supports renters in the rental relationship and does renter education, so I’m deeply connected to my renter community.

And, this is hard to say, but I understand the limited power of the Renter’s Commission. It’s an advisory commission, this Council is not interested in our advice. There have been so many issues that have impacted renters over the last two years since I’ve been on the Commission, and no one has sought our advice. We repeatedly asked for meetings with Councilmember Moore to talk about the rollbacks that we heard that she was discussing. She said she wanted to create more dialog between renters and landlords, but she was only meeting with landlords.

It speaks to just this larger issue. You defunded tenant services by 40%. You didn’t talk to us when you put forward Proposition 1B which deeply undermined social housing. Renters are 60% of the city, and we are totally being shut out, and you won’t even make appointments to a performative commission. I’m grateful that there was all the media coverage for Councilmember Saka and Council President Nelson for not showing up to the meeting, but honestly Council President Nelson could have put these appointments on the agenda at any time in the last 18 months that she’s been President. I’ve testified this now 6 times in public comment. This is unacceptable. Thank you.”