A photo collage from Harrell’s 2022 One Seattle report
Mayor Bruce Harrell will deliver his second State of the City address Tuesday touting his administration’s first year of accomplishments and setting the stage for his next steps as the city more fully awakens from pandemic slowdowns but continues to be tangled in challenges around homelessness, addiction, mental health, affordability, and climate change. Meanwhile, new economic challenges from the surge in interest rates lurk.
The mayor’s office has produced a “summary year-end report” detailing “the Harrell administration’s work in 2022” that we have embedded below. In it, Harrell’s office says his “One Seattle” campaign “invites dialogue and learning, collaboration and cooperation, innovation, and thoughtful change” but there is “more work ahead.”
“We must continue to ensure effective long-term public safety, advance sustainable solutions to our region’s homelessness and housing crises, build community resilience to the impacts of climate change, and drive an equitable economic recovery that uplifts all neighborhoods across our beautiful city,” Harrell’s introduction reads.
Among his accomplishments last year, the report includes the mayor’s work coordinating major law enforcement operations targeting problems like fentanyl, illegal firearms, and organized retail theft as well as his plan for a hiring bonus program that will try to grow Seattle’s police force nearly 50% by 2027.
The report also touts the administration’s efforts to help open more than 2,200 affordable housing units in the city last year while making more than 1,600 referrals to shelters for people living on the streets. The report includes the claim that the Harrell administration achieved reaching “93% of parks and natural areas open to the public.”
In his first “State of the City” address last year, Harrell focused on a Seattle emerging from years of pandemic restrictions and small steps — including city workers beginning to return to their offices — he said would set the stage for recovery. This year, Harrell’s speech will come with the backdrop of Amazon, one of the city’s leading employers, introducing new “in person” office requirements for its employees.
The full report is below. You can watch the address via the Seattle Channel here.
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