Mayor Ed Murray opened his speech with a dad joke reference to can you hear me now and then talked about the serious inequities facing our city.
Mayor Ed Murray opened his speech with a dad joke (something about "Can you hear me now?") and then talked about the serious inequities facing our city. City of Seattle

The state of the city is increasingly unaffordable and racially and economically unequal. At least those were the most telling acknowledgements in Mayor Ed Murray’s 2015 State of the City speech today, during which he drew attention to huge issues facing Seattle while staying vague on what he’ll do about most of them.

“While Seattle is strong and, I believe, getting stronger, we must recognize that the benefits of our thriving city are not jointly shared,” Murray said, acknowledging inequities in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system. (Read the whole speech here; watch it here.)

Here are some of the promises he did make:

• To make race and social justice a “core value” in the city’s upcoming revision of its Comprehensive Plan, which outlines how the city should grow over the next 20 years.

• To release “Move Seattle,” a new plan to help determine which transportation projects get funded. (He also gave a shoutout to the need for light rail connections to Ballard and West Seattle, but that’s part of an ongoing effort to fund Sound Transit 3. Wayyy more about that over at Seattle Transit Blog.)

• To “move forward on a number of initiatives this year that will help close the gender pay gap,” though he didn’t get any more specific than that. Word from council offices is that paid parental leave is the next thing the administration will announce. I’ll believe that when I see it. (Same for the multiple studies on paid leave and the pay gap we’re still waiting for.)

• $35 million to enact the recommendations of his Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda committee. Those recommendations for addressing the city’s housing affordability crisis are due in May from HALA—pronounced “holla!”—but things are moving slowly for that group. By the way, it’s important to note this isn’t new money. It’ll come from the city’s already existing housing levy and incentive zoning fees. “The mayor wanted to be sure that committee members and the council know there are significant resources on the table,” spokesperson Jason Kelly told me by e-mail.

• An “Education Summit to re-envision how a 21st century urban public school system can work successfully for all students.” That’ll involve city, school district, and state officials, plus teachers, parents, and people from the private sector, according to the mayor. (If you’re playing Ed Murray bingo, cross off the “creates a new task force” box and take a shot.)

• Also on the summit front, he’ll convene a “Youth Opportunity Summit” of African American community leaders, people from the nonprofit world, “experts in academia,” and others to take on the following super-broad topics: “eliminate the educational opportunity gap, increase long-term employment, and reduce juvenile crime rates.”

• Two new websites for getting information about the city: performance.seattle.gov, where you can find data about nine city departments’ goals (like reducing their carbon footprint) and how well they’re doing at meeting those goals; and openbudget.seattle.gov, which actually appears to be a decently user-friendly way to look at where the city is spending its money.

• Double the number of youth participating in Youth Green Corps, a job training program run by Seattle Goodwill and the city’s parks department.

• On police reform, he promised to recruit a “more diverse police force,” train more officers in bias-free policing and deescalation, streamline the complaint process for residents reporting complaints about police officers, increase data collection and reporting about police misconduct, “increase civilian oversight of every aspect of the police discipline and accountability system," and provide “significant new transparency to instill public confidence and ensure that incidents of misconduct are not swept under the rug.” (Does that last one mean anything?) Good on Murray for bringing this stuff up, but, again, we’re looking for specifics. Here’s a breakdown of what the mayor needs to push for in his ongoing negotiations with the police union in order to increase accountability at the department—and look for more on how Seattle can improve its oversight of the SPD in this week’s paper.