Bill Radke speaks with Seattle Mayor Ed Murray about current issues facing the city including being a sanctuary city for immigrants, tackling a West Coast homeless problem, ensuring affordable housing, preserving the culture in neighborhoods facing rapid gentrification and bringing a new sports team (and arena) to the city.
About that sports team:
Bill Radke: "I want to ask about the new proposed sports arena: Sodo or Key Arena?"
Murray: "I'm willing to work with anybody who can bring us a team. And so far what we've heard from Chris Hansen is he'd really like that arena, but he himself is not going to bring us a team.
"So we have several questions to sort out here. One is the city has a resource that the taxpayers are going to pay for one way or another, and that's Key Arena. Is that a possibility? And again, is someone going to actually bring us a team?
"If that doesn't work, Sodo is still an option. But again, someone is going to have to identify who's going to actually pay to bring us a team I think for me to be able to get anything through [the City] Council."
Issues discussed (with minute markers)
- Concerns about President-elect Donald Trump (1:00)
- Tackling homeless crisis (2:45)
- Affordable housing and rental laws (7:25)
- Replacing Tim Burgess on the Seattle City Council (9:50)
- Fighting Trump's immigration policy (11:00)
- Upzoning and city densification (12:40)
- Sodo or Key Arena? (13:50)
- Winning back working class voters to the Democrats (14:50)
- Threat of HUD funding being cut to sanctuary cities (17:10)
- Getting homeless kids into housing (18:45)
- Lessons to learn from other cities with a homeless crisis (19:20)
- Progress on building and preserving affordable housing (21:25)
- SNOW in Seattle and salting streets (22:20)
- Growing segregation in Seattle (24:45)
