Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson attended the Seattle LGBTQ Commission meeting on Thursday, Aug. 20 at Seattle City Hall, where she announced that her team was able to secure an additional $250,000 worth of city funding that will be put towards the plight of LGBTQIA+ refugees fleeing to the city.
Mayor Wilson told a full conference room of city officials and community members that she came with no prepared remarks, but that in spite of the “very big budget challenges coming up”, her and her office were still committed to making progress towards addressing the struggles LGBTQIA+ organizations are facing in the city. She also announced that $100,000 of that money will be put towards a resource workshop this fall to help organizations and other mutual aid groups to access the funds as quickly and streamlined as possible.
The mayor’s announcement comes as Seattle City Council last week unanimously approved a one-time, $300,000 sum from the mid-year budget to support the crisis. During their announcement, Mayor Wilson and her staff made it clear that their priority in this endeavor was to find on-going funds within the city budget, as this additional $250,000 funding will (unlike the City Council bill) run as a recurring yearly sum budgeted until 2029.
In attendance alongside the mayor was her newly appointed LGBTQ Affairs advisor Dominique Stephens. Stephens told the SGN that in her 11 years working within City Hall, Mayor Wilson has been in her view the only executive that has been serious enough about addressing these deeply systemic community issues.
“I have been with 7 administrations” she said to the room of attendees. “This is an open door mayor.”
More SPD controversy
Outside of the funding announcement, Mayor Wilson also notified the room that an upcoming article in the press regarding Seattle Interim Chief of Police Andre Sayles would be released the next day by Publicola.
The article details how Interim Chief Sayles filed an OPA complaint against SPD veteran detective Elizabeth Wareing, who gave a three minute speech at a No Hate In Washington State rally last November. Wareing, with 29 years of experience investigating child abuse, shared her fears for the high potential of sexual abuse under IL 26-638. If enacted, the law would potentially require invasive physical exams of student’s reproductive organs if their gender is being questioned. She said in her speech this was dangerous because, "sexual predators often set themselves up as authority figures."
According to PubliCola, Chief Sayles in his OPA filing on Dec. 15 cited two videos made by Brandi Kruse (who has been the main proponent of the ballot initiatives) as evidence that Wareing “made several comments that lacked credible facts related to the potential exposure to sexual assault by adults on youth, especially females and persons who identify as LGBTQ+,” as well as “was insubordinate, violating the guidelines he set out for her, and that she was dishonest in saying inaccurate and untrue things during the press conference.”
The mayor’s office at the LGBTQ Commission meeting said this complaint was filed not for Wareing’s supportive Trans beliefs, but because she had used an agency name that she did not have permission to share.
“A city employee has rules on what can you name or not name in testifying” Stephens said.
PubliCola also said it confirmed Mayor Wilson knew about this OPA complaint before promoting Sayles to be interim chief. And Mayor Wilson told the SGN after the meeting that her office would be releasing a short statement regarding the situation.
Community concerns
The community and officials in attendance at the meeting also asked the mayor and her team several questions. Elle Cree of Stone Soup Crew confronted the mayor about individual reports of officer harassment with LGBTQIA+ community members.
“There are three officers that keep getting named over and over” Cree said and urged the mayor to take action.
Multiple attendees asked the mayor about the dissolution of the Trans and Queer Stabilization Interdepartmental Team. Seattle LGBTQ Commission board member Cadence Sagen said that during the first iteration of the IDT, “it felt like we were very sidelined” on what changes were going to be made and how the commission wasn’t included in the policymaking process by the mayor’s office. She also brought up how as the commission does more and more work, there needs to be ways to compensate the board.
“It’s hard to find the diversity when people are unpaid and spend so much time doing the work” she told the mayor.
Similar sentiments were echoed by other members of the commission including co-chair Chris Curia and board member Ashley Ford.
“This past year for us has been spent figuring out what infrastructure we really need for queer people in this city” Ford said. “We knew we needed it before, but now it is very desperately needed.”
Curia brought up the example of how in Seattle the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs had grown from being a volunteer commission (like the LGBTQ Commission is now) out of the Office of Civil Rights.
“It was the play that was needed for the immigrant/refugee side, and we would love to see more ways to build that infrastructure in Seattle” Curia said.
The mayor’s visit to the commission ended with her and her team reiterating their commitment to working with the commission and local LGBTQIA+ community to find solutions to these problems.
“The seed has been planted. And it will depend on us how large we want it to grow” Stephens said.
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