Observations on King County's May 6th Burien Public Safety Meeting

"It became quite clear that the Burien city council is not calling the shots when it comes to police protection...." - D. Preston

The following commentary on the May 6, 2024 King County Public Safety meeting in Burien was published on The Burien Voice Facebook page, dated May 7, 2024. We received permission to publish on Burien-News from original author David Preston.by David Preston. Some observations about the Burien Public Safety meeting at Highline Auditorium last night.1) The most striking thing for me (David), was that there was no one who actually works for the City of Burien on the stage: No Burien electeds and no Burien employees. Chief Boe doesn't count because he works for Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall, who works for Dow Constantine, King County Executive. Boe spoke to the issue of who he works for (Cole-Tindall or the people of Burien) and while he insisted that it wasn't a "binary" thing, he made it clear that, at the end of the day, he answers to Cole-Tindall. In other words: it's a binary thing.2) The meeting was scheduled in conflict with a Burien city council special meeting, meaning that no Burien CM was able to be there. Nor was city manager Adolfo Bailon, whose presence is generally required at special meetings of the council. I'm not sure how the conflict happened or whether it was by design.3) Three of the five panelists didn't need to be there since they couldn't speak to the topic at hand, which was why Chief Boe is not willing/able to enforce Burien's anti-camping ordinance. One of our admins who also attended opined that the other three panelists were there to kill time and take the focus off of Boe and Cole-Tindall. Sounds reasonable to me.4) In the course of the discussion, it became quite clear that the Burien city council is not calling the shots when it comes to police protection. In fact, if an outsider came to this meeting not knowing anything about Burien, they would conclude that Burien wasn't actually a city at all but rather an unincorporated part of King County run by the King County executive and council. When an audience member asked Sheriff Cole-Tindall what would happen if Burien simply stopped paying for police services or told the King County Sheriff's Office to stop providing them, Sheriff Cole-Tindall said that the Sheriff's office would continue providing policing to Burien and would go to court to force Burien to pay for the services. These are clearly not the sentiments of someone who recognizes Burien as its own city, and I think that, legally, she could probably get away with doing that, although it would cost both her and Dow Constantine politically.5) Both Cole-Tindall and Boe spoke assertively and articulately. Cole-Tindall owes her job and her allegiance to Dow Constantine, but she's clearly no puppet. She seems to sincerely believe that the camping ordinance is un-Constitutional or otherwise violates the law. When asked why she didn't approach the Burien city council about her misgivings first, before taking the matter to court, she blamed it on the chilly relations between the city council and her office. She also said (or implied) that Burien should have come to her before expanding the ordinance, so she could run it by King County's lawyers.6) When asked why the Sheriff's Office was enforcing SeaTac's ordinance and not Burien's, Cole-Tindall replied that the ordinances were different. SeaTac has hotel vouchers it can give to vagrants who can then be moved along (or arrested) if they decline to accept them. I think this is accurate. Burien has had more than enough time to work out a similar approach to SeaTac's, but for some reason, they haven't. Cole-Tindall also said that SeaTac's situation was different because they don't have any large camps, but that is irrelevant to the question of legal enforceability. She was reaching there.7) If last night's crowd is any indicator, Chief Boe is still very popular with the people of Burien. There was some hearty applause for him. You might counter that the auditorium was only half full and that it was a friendly crowd of leftists. That might well be true. However, if no "unfriendlies" turn up to confront Boe and Cole-Tindall, you can't blame them for thinking they have popular support. That's a big part of the problem with Burien politics: the people who complain loudest online never turn up for these meetings, where airing their complaints might actually make a difference.8 ) As a whole, the meeting was unsatisfying. Boe and Cole-Tindall didn't acknowledge that the vagrancy situation in Burien has gotten much worse since they stopped enforcing either the original camping ordinance or the expanded one.** Nor did they make any commitment to personally do anything to help resolve the crisis. Cole-Tindall implied that she was treading water until a federal court rules on whether the camping ordinance is Constitutional. My hunch is the court will strike it down or punt, leaving Burien in limbo. In that case, don't look for Cole-Tindall or Dow Constantine to do anything good for Burien. If Dow does anything at all, it will be to dangle some more money in front of Burien to get the city to accept more shack villages, shelters, and homeless megaplexes like DESC. Which will be no help at all of course, because those things only exacerbate the vagrancy and squalor._ _ _ _ _**There's some confusion about whether the camping ban expansion was a replacement for the original one or merely an amendment. Cole-Tindall characterized it as a replacement and used that to justify her refusal going forward to enforce any part of the ban, either the old ban or the new ban. Darla Green shouted at Cole-Tindall that the ban expansion was just an amendment, suggesting that Cole-Tindall could have continued enforcing the original ban.[caption id="attachment_17570" align="aligncenter" width="720"]

Original Post 5/7/24 by The Burien Voice on Facebook.[/caption][NOTE FROM EDITOR: We invite local guest authors to engage with Burien-News. If you wish to submit a story, photo, video, article or letter, please contact us. Even if you wish to remain anonymous, please include your name and phone number so we may contact you privately. We look forward to hearing from you.]