The tenants didn't have much time to chant. Within 30 seconds, McIver was calling a halt to the meeting, and within two minutes, a council staffer had dimmed the lights on the empty dais. Michele Thomas, a young, animated TU staffer, got the last word. "We know you don't have to make these [budget] decisions on the backs of the poor! We're community members. For Pete's sake--we're not going to hurt you!" By that time, only Council Members David Della, Peter Steinbrueck, and Nick Licata were there to hear her shout.
After some hasty negotiations, McIver reconvened the meeting, and allowed two Tenants Union representatives--executive director Siobhan Ring and board member Sakita Martin, who read a statement by tenant Sheila Hayes--to testify. After the meeting, the protesters, who wore matching red T-shirts bearing the words "Tenants Union member" in five different languages--presented council members with the plastic rats, which Ring called "an example of the deplorable conditions tenants live in every day." Attached to each rat was a packet of testimonials from tenants who benefited from the Tenants Union's services over the past year.
McIver, who found himself on the losing end of a 7-2 vote to approve the Tenants Union's funding last November, wasn't swayed. "We know your problems. We know your issues.... We are not able to provide those services at the level we have been providing them," McIver told tenants Monday. Licata--who later yelled, "I had no control over this--sorry!" to a group of tenants outside council chambers--squeaked his rat mischievously during his colleague's comments.
The $10 million shortfall is only the latest blow to a $660 million city budget that has been beset by cuts and revenue shortfalls over the last few years. The proposed budget reduction would cut funding for an information hotline that serves non-English-speaking, low-income tenants ($35,000); a YWCA program that provides showers and other services to homeless women ($140,000); and the Shalom Zone, a nonprofit that provides services to homeless U-District youth ($14,000).
From council chambers, the scruffy activists--surrounded by KIRO and Fox reporters wielding boom mikes and Sony Betacam cameras--headed up to the seventh floor, where Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, with typical hangdog charm, accepted the rat they proffered. Ceis, who emerged from the mayor's office flanked by Nickels spokeswoman Marianne Bichsel and spokesman Casey Corr, repeated the words that were on many council members' lips: "The budget process was a difficult one.... Services for tenants are still being provided by other programs."
Asked for specific examples of such programs, Bichsel produced a list of several groups, including the Fremont Public Association, which she says provides "a hotline... [that] is similar to the service provided by the Tenants Union."
Baloney, says Ring. "I don't think [the Fremont Public Association is] sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for 4,000 additional people to call them," Ring says, referring to the number of people the Tenants Union served in King County last year. "And we offer a particular expertise" in landlord-tenant issues, she adds. Peggy Pearson, a low-income tenant who turned to the Tenants Union when the Seattle Housing Authority overcharged her last year, backs Ring's assertion. "I was PO'd when the mayor's office told us there were other agencies," Pearson says. "I didn't get help until I connected with the Tenants Union."
The budget reduction, which eliminated the city's entire $72,000 contribution to the Tenants Union, will force the advocacy organization to drastically reduce its services. Currently, the TU's $184,000 budget enables the group to educate renters about their rights, organize low-income tenants, and help people resolve landlord-tenant disputes. "It would be a tragedy if their funding was cut," says Sheila Hayes, a 49-year-old renter who turned to the TU after her landlord refused to fix a hole in her daughter's bedroom window.
The cuts--which spared popular programs like libraries, school crossing guards, and the neighborhood matching fund--came down last year, after the state supreme court ruled that the city, not Seattle City Light ratepayers, should foot the bill for street lighting costs. The city was left with a $10 million hole in a budget that had been approved by the council last November. With little time to spare, the mayor and council hatched an unusual plan: Instead of going through the usual budget process--in which the mayor proposes a budget and the council hammers it out in public meetings--a representative from the mayor's office and select council members would negotiate the cuts in secret, present them to fellow council members, and come up with a proposal on which everyone could agree. Only then would they unveil the cuts before the general public.
Steinbrueck, who was not part of the closed-door committee, acknowledged that he was less than thrilled with this year's budget process. "I was not involved in it," he told Tenants Union protesters Monday, leaning over the wall that separates the public from the council dais. "I heard about the cuts the night before they were announced." Council Member Tom Rasmussen, who reportedly fought to restore the cuts during the closed-door negotiations, called it a "heartbreaking" decision. But Ring, unswayed by Rasmussen's reassuring words, says she would have expected the human services committee chairman to "do more" to preserve funding for the Tenants Union. "I think he did fight for us. I also think he could have fought harder," she says.
Ultimately, the budget will have to be approved by the full council, probably in late March. But if budget chair McIver's comments after the meeting are any indication, it's unlikely that council members will be moved by any last-minute entreaties from the public. "When we've got over 200 contracts, and you have 10 people coming down and lobbying the council, it's not fair for those 10 projects to get approved and the other 190 to lose out," McIver said.
