A town hall community forum featuring Mayor Mike McGinn was held Thursday night, Dec. 2, at the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, 4408 Delridge Way SW. Booths representing City departments and neighborhood organizations lined the main hallway leading into the theater space where the mayor spoke to a crowd in the stands. The Mayor was preceded by a rock band performance by Castbound, four young teens who met at the School of Rock and are enrolled in Band at Youngstown. They include Cameron Sonju, lead singer and guitar, Jonathan Mantello, guitar and backup vocals, Nicholas Barker, bass, and Jackson Wilder, drums.

A Q&A followed the Mayor's remarks, and several teens who participate in Youngstown programs lined up to ask hardball questions, including inadequate bus routes and underfunded public schools in diverse neighborhoods.

The Q&A was co-hosted by community activists Chas Redmond and Pete Spalding. Redmond is Southwest District Council co-chair. Spalding is president of the Pigeon Point Community Council.

In the Mayor's opening remarks, he discussed the Youth & Families Initiative, Walk Bike Ride, and Engage Seattle.

Youth & Families Initiative website: www.youthandfamilies.seattle.gov
Walk, Bike, Ride website: www.walkbikeride.seattle.gov
ENGAGE SEATTLE website: www.seattle.gov/engage

McGinn spoke of developing families and education levies for next year with Youth & Families Initiative.

"We know that if a child is reading at a third grade level they are likely to graduate high school," he said. "We can we make sure our reading programs hit that target. We also know that kids being read to at young age do well in school. We will offer volunteer programs and encourage parents to work with kids."

Regarding Walk, Bike, Ride, he said, "We can make better choices on how we spend our transportation dollars and focus on getting better transit out to places like West Seattle and Ballard. We can do a better job getting reliable buses through our local street system, and build better sidewalks.

Touching on ENGAGE SEATTLE he said, "City government supports creating a culture of government working directly with community members on problems identified by community members. We will offer organizing training and volunteer opportunities. We don't have the dollars we used to have. Maybe we never really had them. They weren't 'real' dollars, anyway. They were make believe dollars. But we really have 'us'. And our time is more valuable than dollars."

Marisa Brasfield of Arbor Heights asked the Mayor the first question. She is an intern at Youngstown and attends Ballard High School, a long bus ride from her home.

"If you are expecting people to participate in Walk, Bike, Ride, how are you going to make sure that there are more buses and that they run more frequently, especially that they run east-west and southwest?

"We need more buses, frequency, lines," she added. "I am 18 and can't afford a car."

McGinn agreed. "To many of our residents existing transit doesn't give them good choices. There are some equality and social justice implications to that. One of the best predictors whether people can hold a job a long time is whether they own a car. Think about what an obstacle that is. We have some real challenges there."

He said 19-percent of Seattle households have no car.

"We don't run bus system. That's from King County (Metro). One thing we can do to make the bus system better is to work with a regional transit task force to try to make sure that bus service is allocated where it does the most good rather than on the basis of who has political power, which is kind of the old system. Metro now is facing severe funding (shortages). It is funded this year, but next year it will face cuts. With an updated Transit Master Plan, we will try to develop partnering strategies.

"The Transit Master Plan we have still has a monorail in it and hasn't been updated in a while. We need an updated document to reach out to public to prioritize where to invest next.

"WSDOT runs the highway system. In my opinion we put way too much money into those big capital highway projects and not enough into local bus service. We're going to put, between the deep-bore tunnel and the 520 Bridge, billions and billions and billions of dollars into roads that will have a toll on them. If you can own a car and can pay a toll we have a solution for you, but if you ride a bus we cut your service to fund the tunnel and bridge. I'm going to advocate for something different. I think that is what the public wants. We need to stand together as a city."

Marisa Brasfield later told the West Seattle Herald she is a senior at Ballard High School. "My mom drives me to school sometimes, but when I take a bus home from school it takes an hour and 45 minutes to get home to Arbor Heights. It is hell to catch the bus to school."

Another teen was concerned about inequities of the quality of schools between higher and lower income neighborhoods.

"We're not immune from national trends in which we've had widening income inequality in our country since the Reagan era," the Mayor said (...) "We are at one of the most inequal times in U.S. history. As Seattle becomes a more desirable place to live, and it is a beautiful city now, those with means, with money, will tend to drive out those without. We have to tackle the root causes of inequality. Inequality can be based in someone's country of origin, ethnic background, race. it's just a fact, whether it is employment, wealth, educational outcomes, arrest, or incarceration rates, there may be two Seattles (...)

"Youth and Family Initiative is intended to address that in part by providing everybody an equal opportunity. The levy we are working on will have flexible funds in it to target families and schools that need the most help, those who are victims of historic patterns of inequity. The lowest performing schools are overlaid with where the most diverse and least wealthy communities are. Frankly, this is not acceptable."

He said that the City is generous with its housing levy but needs to encourage more affordable units as a whole. He added that when you see new housing being built, it may be good for low income residents in the long run.

He added, "When you see new housing construction going on, some people see that as a wave of gentrification."

Several audience members sported Luna Park Cafe t-shirts. Two from the restaurant expressed concern that the new Rapid Ride route threatens to remove many parking spaces their customers depend on.

The Mayor asked an SDOT representative Bill Bryant to respond, and he said those planning the routes are well aware of the Luna Park Cafe's situation, and that of other area businesses on Avalon just south of the Spokane Bridge. He said the original plans would have displaced over 30 parking spaces on Avalon and that number has so far been cut in half. Also, he said they are looking at creating more city parking spaces on nearby side streets.