This spring, after a rise in hate crimes against LGBTQ people in the city, including an attack on a 25-year-old in Georgetown, Mayor Ed Murray did what Mayor Ed Murray does and formed a task force on the issue. Today, that group released its report, and Murray announced an "action plan" to try to reduce anti-LGBTQ hate crimes throughout the city.

Among the mayor's plans is not, as has been much discussed, a new shelter specifically for LGBTQ youth.

"What we heard," Murray said today, was that "they didn’t need to be separated out or segregated out. They needed people in current shelters with the training capacity to help them.” (Danielle Askini, executive director of the Gender Justice League, added that because of anti-discrimination laws the city can't actually create a shelter only for LGBTQ youth.)

Instead, the focus of Murray's plans is on funding groups that already serve the LGBTQ population, creating a new public education campaign, and making the built environment safer.

Citywide, according to the mayor's office, there have been 41 anti-LGBTQ hate crimes reported to Seattle police in the first seven months of this year, an increase over the 28 crimes reported in the first seven months of last year.

"Despite all of Seattle’s progressive laws supporting the LGBTQ community," the task force wrote in its report to the mayor, "there is a sense among many in the community that the city that once made them feel safe and at home is changing."

That is particularly true on Capitol Hill, "a neighborhood that has for decades been the epicenter of LGBTQ culture in Seattle."

"As the city’s population grows and its neighborhoods experience unprecedented development," the group wrote, "places like Capitol Hill experience a shift in character. For Capitol Hill’s LGBTQ residents and visitors, this shift is defined for many by feelings of cultural tension, uncertainty about the future, concerns about personal safety, and a loss of a sense of place."

Among the mayor's plans, which mostly align with the task force's recommendations, he is promising to:

• Budget $40,000 in new city money next year for Project EQTY (Elevating Queer and Trans Youth), a "capacity building" program to help make sure already-existing service providers, including shelters, can serve LGBTQ youth.

• Focus city grants on LGBTQ service providers. Specifically, the city will target its neighborhood matching grants at LGBTQ organizations throughout the rest of this year. Then the mayor plans to include increased funding for those grants in his budget for next year.

• Direct the Seattle Police Department to evaluate the LGBTQ "cultural competency" training it offers officers. As Ansel wrote earlier this year, decreasing hate crimes against LGBTQ people is not as easy as just adding more police officers. Many in the LGBTQ community may hesitate to report hate crimes to police at all.

"Reasons for this reticence," wrote the task force in its report, "range from being misgendered by police officers; fear of harassment or of not being taken seriously; and a general mistrust of the police due to past experiences, either in Seattle or in other communities-of-origin. These obstacles can be especially difficult for transgender people of color, who are who are more likely to be the target of hate-based violence and experience harassment and maltreatment from law enforcement."

So, an evaluation would attempt to figure out if the SPD could be doing a better job on that. But when I asked for more details about this at today's press conference, Murray couldn't provide any more information about what this type of evaluation might look like or when it will begin. He did say he hopes it will be done within the next six months.

(On a semi-related note, Murray added that he has encouraged the city's fire chief to try to "create an environment where it is safe to have out gay male firefighters." Murray said the department has never had an openly gay firefighter.)

• Fund a new public education campaign about "LGBTQ justice and equality," to be designed by the city's Office for Civil Rights. (When the task force recommended something like this in its report, the group gave the example of the "I Am Capitol Hill" campaign.)

• Direct City Light to analyze lighting on Capitol Hill and improve lighting in dark areas that may be unsafe. That, the Gender Justice League's Askini told me after today's announcement, is a "really big deal." This winter, Askini said a group of people followed them (they/them is Askini's gender pronoun) several blocks to their car in an under-construction area of Capitol Hill yelling "fucking faggot."

"There were no businesses there because everything was being built," Askini said. "There was no place for me to duck into, there was no lighting, there were no sidewalks." Askini said that because of the increase in violence on Capitol Hill, the Gender Justice League has seen decreased attendance at some meetings and has moved its meetings to Tuesdays instead of Thursdays and Fridays to avoid the Hill's weekend crowd. "People are fucking terrified," Askini said.

• Install more rainbow crosswalks near the new light-rail station on Capitol Hill. (The 11 crosswalks the city has already installed cost about $66,000.)

• Along with an ordinance Murray has already introduced that will require all single-occupancy city bathrooms to be designated as "all-gender," the parks department will "evaluate best practices" to figure out how to create safer restrooms in parks. The task force specifically called out Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill as a park that needs safer restrooms for transgender and gender-nonconforming people.

Monisha Harrell, board chair of Equal Rights Washington and cochair of the task force, said the mayor's plan is “both actionable and realistic, and we believe [it] will actually make a difference for our community.”

But the mayor remained fuzzy on many specific funding questions. His plan commits to spending about $162,400 total on Project EQTY and other LGBTQ-focused nonprofits. Yet it also promises that the city's Human Services Department will improve its housing programs for transgender homeless youth, including the possibility of giving them hotel vouchers, but includes no specifics about how much funding that effort might get. Expect more clarity later this summer when the mayor sends the city council his proposed budget for 2016.

Askini said the recommendations do little to address the big systematic needs, like more mental health, drug, and alcohol treatment, that could help reduce hate crimes. But Askini praised the work of the task force and the mayor. Even a public education campaign—which usually falls squarely within the least-they-could-do category of government action—could help.

"We’re in this mode [in Seattle of thinking], 'We're so liberal. We have gay marriage. We smoke pot.' But that doesn't match the violence people experience," Askini said. "We can’t just rest on our liberal laurels."