So, right here we go once more; Seattle has elected one other new mayor following a collection of single-term mayors who didn’t have sufficient time to attain all they promised. Will Katie Wilson be different, or will she be one more city chief executive taking only a brief ride on the civic merry-go-round?
Like her predecessor, Bruce Harrell, Wilson looks as if a honest, respectable one who needs to do the proper factor. In contrast to her predecessor, she has scant expertise in metropolis authorities. That have labored in opposition to Harrell within the mayoral election as a result of he was branded — pretty or not — because the institution bum who wanted tossing out. In 4 years, will Wilson appear like the starry-eyed novice whose socialist-lite schemes had been too dreamy and impractical to work?
Wilson is just not the primary mayor to come back from outdoors the same old political paths. Again within the late Seventies, Seattle picked a tv information reporter, Charles Royer, to run town and he turned out to be an ideal success — however that success got here in Royer’s second and third phrases after hits and misses and a number of studying on the job throughout his preliminary 4 years. Within the final decade-and-a-half, no mayor has received a second time period.
Harrell, the son of a Japanese mom and a Black father who pushed his means up from humble beginnings in Seattle’s Central Space, narrowly missed profitable one other shot in an election that was practically a tie. Wilson, an East Coast little one of privilege who arrived in Seattle after dropping out of Oxford, must be sensible sufficient to know her victory was no mandate. Wilson must develop past her life as a progressive activist; she must be what she has promised she can be: a mayor for everybody on this metropolis.
Wilson will attempt to discover a more practical method to serve the various unhoused folks in our metropolis, however, as she makes an attempt this, she should not ignore the issues of residents and store homeowners who really feel the adverse impacts of encampments, drug use and legal exercise.
Wilson will help novel alternate options to jailing and prosecuting petty criminals, those that are hooked on medication and folks with threatening psychological disabilities, however she will probably be seen as a failure if she forgets the victims — largely folks in already deprived communities — that suffer by the hands of anti-social and violent perpetrators.
Wilson will act on her largest concern, the excessive price of dwelling on this wealthy metropolis, significantly for renters, however she can be smart to not overlook that vibrant neighborhoods are what make Seattle an unusually livable metropolis, and that every one the nice works she hopes to attain depend on tax income from a robust enterprise sector that can’t be merely vilified as an enemy camp.
As mayor, there are many sharp needles Katie Wilson must thread and I want her luck. Oh, and on the best way to doing massive issues, I hope she’ll repair a number of potholes.
See extra of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
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