Dear Mayor-Elect Wilson:
Congratulations. You are about to become the 58th mayor of Seattle. You bravely put yourself forward and won. Come January you will manage 14,000 city employees and administer a city budget of $8.9 billion. This is an awesome responsibility for anyone, most especially for someone who previously worked as the director of the Transit Riders Union, a small, volunteer group you helped create in 2011.
To persevere, you will need all the help and advice you can secure from your transition team and from others. In that spirit, I’d like to offer a few suggestions. These thoughts were acquired during my 12 years on the city council and observations as a journalist. Please know my only motive is wishing you success serving all Seattle – those who voted for you and the almost 50 percent who did not. Always remember you do not have a mandate.
As mayor-elect, your first and most important job will be to select experienced men and women to help run the city. It may sound heartless, but you should forget paying off campaign workers for their loyalty. You need to be pragmatic and choose people able to steer you in the right direction, people who can say “don’t do that” if you head in the wrong direction.
One of the most critical choices you’ll make is finding a veteran budget director. Unlike state and federal budgets, city budgets by law must balance. In Seattle, analysts have been projecting a $150-million mismatch between revenues and expenses. In the remaining weeks before you take office, Mayor Bruce Harrell and the council must deal with that shortfall, but the gap will continue to plague the city.
Although you once served on a committee, the Revenue Stabilization Workgroup, identifying possible new sources of revenue, you will discover that, if you get council support for a new tax, added income won’t be realized for at least a year. Meanwhile, Seattle must manage on a constrained diet.
Remember, too, that whereas the mayor proposes a budget, the council reviews the mayor’s proposal, inevitably making changes before passing the next year’s budget by December 1. There’s seldom wiggle room. The bulk of the $8.9-billion city budget encompasses municipal utilities: City Light and Seattle Public Utilities. What’s left is the city’s general fund: around $2 billion. That fund must cover all the city’s operating expenses.
When allocating the general fund, be aware that public safety — police, fire, and CARE departments — will consume more than 50 percent. The remainder must stretch to cover transportation, parks, human services, education, early learning, intergovernmental relations, civil rights, the departments of immigrants and refugee affairs, neighborhoods, construction and land use, and more.
While it’s lonely at the top, you’ll get a hand running the city from your cabinet. A mayor typically appoints a deputy mayor or two, a chief of staff, chief operating officer, human resources director, policy director, communications director, and a press secretary.
The strength of your cabinet depends on your appointing the savviest people you can find. Even then, you’ll find that government operates at a snail’s pace. No matter how hard you and your team may work, it can take months, sometimes years, to honor campaign promises. Take the building of affordable housing, for example. Construction requires permitting, design review, and environmental assessment before ground-breaking. Seattle wasn’t built in a day.
Although you may be tempted to replace managers put in place under Mayor Harrell — individuals like the chief of police, utilities superintendents, state liaison, fire department chief — hesitate before acting. You might be sacrificing the expertise you will need. Do you want to consume time and energy finding new people and getting them confirmed? Think twice and act slowly.
Another critical thing to heed is the importance of communication. What matters to the public is the belief that — good news or bad — the mayor is acting with full transparency. Also that the new administration is encouraging two-way communication, always open to hearing from constituents.
From my own experience, I believe one of the best things I did as an elected official was to take time to listen to others, including those with whom I disagreed. It often mattered most to hear those alternative views.
Besides patience and transparency, the other indispensable quality for success is stamina. Being mayor is a 24-hour-a-day job. If there’s an emergency — an earthquake, a flood, a riot, a mass shooting — the head of government must be there. If there is a ceremonial occasion (a state visit, championship game or ribbon cutting) the mayor is expected to show up. Family life, sleep, and privacy are casualties.
In addition to my paltry advice, you will hear boatloads of second-hand wisdom. Much of it should be ignored and will be. Instead, just borrow the motto I adopted when serving: “Success is not final, failure isn’t fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”
Go, Katie.
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