Alex Pedersen won District 4 by 1,386 votes, narrowly defeating Seattle Bike Blog’s endorsed candidate Shaun Scott in one of Seattle’s closest races in the 2019 City Council election. In addition to this site, Scott was also endorsed by Washington Bikes, Seattle Subway, The Urbanist and the Transit Riders Union. That’s a pretty wide coalition of groups working to support more and safer transit, walking and biking.
But the election is over, and Pedersen has since been named Chair of the newly reformatted Transportation and Utilities Committee. Combined, Transportation and Utilities are responsible for more than half the city budget.
I sat down with Pedersen at Irwin’s Cafe in District 4 to talk about his vision for the committee and how he plans to build bridges to folks like Seattle Bike Blog readers and transportation advocates who may have supported his opponent during the 2019 campaign.
“I am really excited now as Councilmember to let my actions speak for themselves,” he said. “I will be doing a lot of things in favor of transit and environmental policies.”
An early win he hopes will bring people together is an environmentally-focused idea Seattle Neighborhood Greenways Founder and 2019 District 4 primary candidate Cathy Tuttle has proposed: Require all proposed city legislation to include a memo about it’s impact on the environment.
“Not only how would it impact emissions, but would it allow us to adapt?” he said, describing the intent of the proposed rule. And no, we’re not talking about “environmental impact” the way Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act (“SEPA”) does, which considers things like slowing car movement as an environmental negative. This memo would focus on the actual environment, meaning “carbon and climate resiliency,” he said. (more…)
