Tag Archives: district 3

Seattle’s newly confirmed police chief set for summer of Safer Seattle Community Forums including D3 where the issues include Pike/Pine disorder, cops in schools, traffic safety, and the First Amendment

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SPD Chief Shon Barnes, left, with Mayor Bruce Harrell, and Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins (Image: City of Seattle)

Tuesday, the city’s new police chief was confirmed by the Seattle City Council. He will spend this summer meeting the neighborhoods his officers patrol.

Chief Shon Barnes was approved by the council Tuesday in a 9-0 vote supporting his initiatives to focus on stabilizing the Seattle Police Department and growing its ranks after tumultuous years coming out of the pandemic and the 2020 protests under former Chief Adrian Diaz.

Barnes is the city’s first Black man to be appointed chief.

In selecting Barnes, Mayor Bruce Harrell chose an outsider to continue efforts to reform and stabilize SPD while also growing alternatives to traditional policing like the city’s new CARE Department crisis responders. The former Madison, Wisconsin chief now leads a force with just over 1,000 sworn officers that just barely reversed a long trend of hiring struggles. The department reports it made 84 successful hires in 2024 — one more officer than it lost.

Part of Barnes’s mission will be restoring goodwill with citizens. The chief will embark on a summer tour of Safer Seattle Community Forums in the city’s seven council districts to share “his vision for Seattle-Centric policing”, provide progress updates, and “engage community in discussions with departments about what public safety means to them and their concerns.” Continue reading →

As Seattle reshapes its goals around growth and development, it also has a new ‘Action Plan’ to help address the high cost of food in the city

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Seattle’s updated plan is hoped to connect more people to fresh food in the city

By Madison Rogers/UW News Lab

Monday, District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth got an earful of what it will be like leading the city’s 20-year planning effort of the neighborhood by neighborhood zoning changes part of the Seattle Comprehensive Plan update.

She also has been focused on Capitol Hill public safety investments around street disorder and public drug use.

In addition to those higher profile challenges, Hollingsworth says her second year serving on the Seattle City Council will also be addressing more of the root causes of Seattle’s problems. Some of those, she says, start with breakfast.

“I am starting to ring the alarm now for our food systems,” Hollingsworth says. “The current way in which we consume food is not sustainable for our future growth as a city, as a state, or as a country.”

Hollingsworth has spoken out on the value of farming and food security in communities and has been a critical contributor to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s efforts to update the city’s $30 million a year Food Action Plan, committed to tackling food insecurity and rising costs with community-driven solutions that improve access, sustainability, and local food equity.

The sprawling connection of programs and initiatives hasn’t been addressed and updated by the city in over ten years.

The new plan prioritizes programs like Fresh Bucks which provides $40 stipends to income-qualifying residents to spend on fresh produce from participating retailers as well as providing the framework for the city’s food programs and community P-Patch gardens. Continue reading →

Hollingsworth will lead Comprehensive Plan committee in 2025 — Check out District 3’s neighborhood by neighborhood proposed zoning and growth changes

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Check out a D3 neighborhood by neighborhood look at the proposed comprehensive plan changes, below

It was only a year ago that Joy Hollingsworth was making the case that issues of development and growth in Seattle showed why the city needs leadership from someone who has lived with those challenges — even if they haven’t been part of shaping policies and government.

“I can speak to real impact,” Hollingsworth told CHS last year during the campaign as The Stranger attacked the candidate for a letter she had written in 2017 opposing a neighboring microhousing development. “The impact it has had on the real communities. That perspective is important.”

Now, as the District 3 representative finishes her first year in office, Hollingsworth will lead the Seattle City Council’s committee dedicated to finalizing the city’s next 20-year plan for zoning, growth, and development.

Councilmember Hollingsworth will lead the council’s select committee on the Comprehensive Plan in 2025.

“Seattle’s comprehensive plan is an opportunity for us to shape what type of city we want to live in for the next twenty years,” Hollingsworth said Monday. Continue reading →

With changes on her City Hall squad, here’s how Hollingsworth’s ‘District Director for District 3’ helps connect the team

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Altshuler (Image: City of Seattle)

With ripples of political change underway at Seattle City Hall, District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth’s team is also making changes headed into 2025. As she works to choose a new policy director, a stabilizing force in the first-year legislator’s office fills a role new to District 3.

Hollingsworth’s District Director for District 3 is Alex Altshuler who says year two in the office will be about continuing to navigate concerns of constituents while building on the team’s legislative victories of 2024 — and smaller, sometimes equally important wins helping constituents and community groups in District 3.

“It’s when I get little wins for the community. I’ve been able to get street lamps that are out of order for a couple of years back on in a few days,” Altshuler tells CHS.

CHS reported just under a year ago on Hollingsworth’s approach to leading District 3 and the formation of a new office as she first assembled her team while still emerging from the long shadows of Kshama Sawant’s highly focused but polarizing political organization. Continue reading →

‘5 things I learned from visiting Amsterdam this weekend’ — District 3 council member locks down social media after Dutch slavery controversy

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City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth has locked down her social media accounts after a post about her Dutch summer vacation went Pacific Northwest-viral over her comparisons between Amsterdam and Seattle spending on infrastructure and services and the legacy of the slave trade.

Hollingsworth has been unique on the council as she has been increasingly candid and open on personal views on social media and in appearances since her election last fall. This has included matters of faith but also her thoughts on issues ranging from economics to farming.

That openness, at least, on social media, has now changed.

CHS spoke with Hollingsworth earlier this week about the episode as her office was still in clean-up mode and trying to decide how best to respond to criticism and questions over her posts about what she says were observations from a personal trip to Amsterdam during the council’s short August break.

“They (the Netherlands) are able to bring out of those resources that they took out of of other countries,” Hollingsworth told CHS earlier this week. “I was trying to point out this history.”

By Friday morning, Hollingsworth’s messages were no longer available and her private social media account put in locked mode. Continue reading →

Need Councilmember Hollingsworth’s attention? Use the new D3help email address

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District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth’s office has rolled out a new way to ask for help around the district beyond potholes and Find It, Fix It issues.

CHS reported on the new [email protected] email alias as Hollingworth took part in a public safety tour around Pike/Pine and Broadway on Friday.

Hollingsworth said the email address is intended to be used so messages sent to her office can be categorized and tracked. The result, Hollingsworth says, is a system that allows her constituents to reach her office directly and produces data and insights about important categories and public safety issues. Continue reading →

How Councilmember Hollingsworth ended up on the District 3 injured list

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Team Hollingsworth is dealing with an injury to a key player.

District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth has been on crutches after two weeks getting around the power corridors of Seattle on a mobility scooter after tearing her calf muscle.

She did not injure herself arguing with Stranger editors on Twitter.

The standout basketball player who even spent a short time as a pro in Greece says it wasn’t the most athletic moment that landed her on Seattle City Hall’s injured list.

The first-year council member said she was running across the street when her muscle “snapped.”

Despite the injury, it has been a busy four months for the freshman legislator. CHS reported here on the first legislation handled by her parks committee and the formation of her office team along with priorities centered on transparency and accessibility.

The injury might make the accessibility part a bigger challenge but Hollingsworth appears game not to let the tear get her down. She is scheduled to take part in a public safety walk on Capitol Hill later this week.

 

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Hollingsworth hears concerns after another day of gun violence in District 3

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Hollingsworth talks with attendees at a public safety forum session earlier this month (Image: CM Hollingsworth)

With reporting by Hannah Saunders

Seattle Police swarmed the busy area between Pratt Park and Dr. Blanche Lavizzo Park in the Central District after reports that a teen opened fire in the middle of a street fight late Tuesday afternoon.

Police said they found shell casings scattered in the street in the just before 5 PM incident and made one arrest. At least one other teen fled police on foot, according to East Precinct radio updates. Somehow, nobody was hit in the melee.

The sight of a teenager opening fire as a group brawled around her near a sunny Seattle park on a Tuesday afternoon was the latest in a burst of gun violence in the city that has sparked concern for parents at nearby Garfield HIgh School and inspired a swirl of community public safety meetings and an increased police presence in nearby neighborhoods.

Tuesday night, Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth held her fourth and final in a series of public safety meetings around District 3 with a session at Capitol HIll’s Seattle Central College where the ongoing shootings dominated the discussion.

It has been a challenging introduction to City Hall for the first-term councilmember who shaped much of her campaign around a pledge to be responsive to concerns about public safety and increased spending on police while also building social and community programs to address the root causes of inequity and addiction that fuel crime in Seattle.

The community meetings are a test of that platform. One community asked Tuesday night why there is so much gun violence occurring in D3. Continue reading →

Hollingsworth’s first co-sponsored legislation passes full council

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(Image: SPU)

It wasn’t her legislation but District 3’s representative on the Seattle City Council marked a milestone earlier this week as the first bill from the committee she chairs was passed by the full body.

Joy Hollingsworth joined here eight council counterparts Tuesday in approving legislation that will allow the city to undertake “ecological thinning” and a limited timber sale in its highly protected Cedar River Watershed east of the city. Continue reading →

Hollingsworth ramps up District 3 public safety meetings

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A recent D3 meeting (Image: CHS)

Seattle City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth has ramped up her schedule of community public safety meetings as she meets with communities across District 3.

The representative will meet with constituents on public safety matters again Tuesday night only two weeks after a previous meeting in the series last week held in the North Capitol Hill area. CHS reported here on that session including debate over a plan for a “Technology Assisted Crime Prevention Pilot” that would include deploying cameras and acoustic gunshot location technologies in hot spot areas of the city.

Hollingsworth’s office says the meetings are part a trio of sessions planned in a row, each in a different area of the district.

Continue reading →