Business owner: Seattle City Council not doing its job

Seattle business owner Bill Cahill says when it comes to crime in the city, “We have a city council that’s asleep at the wheel. They’re not driving in the right direction.”

Cahill owns Beacon Plumbing and Mechanical and he believes, “There’s no place better than Seattle, but we need to get our hands around the city. We need to make the changes necessary. And we need to look back at past elections.”

Cahill was talking with Brandi Kruse, filling in on The Dori Monson Show, and said he shops every Christmas for his six children and his 10 grandchildren at Nordstrom’s downtown.

“We can’t let what happened to downtown Seattle ever happen again. Those stores were beaten up here. Nobody did anything about it. It was terrible. Merchandise was just taken off the shelves.

“We stood back and watched. It was a cowardly act for all of us in Seattle to let that happen.”

Piroshky Piroshky, closed in 2022 due to crime, set to reopen after Christmas

Cahill said, “We have to say what we have on our minds because we don’t want to be blinded. We want to be able to tell the truth. We can’t look at political parties as our government, we have to look at our country as our country and the state of Washington as the state of Washington.”

Brandi agreed and commended Bill for talking openly about the crime problem in the city. She said that seven of the nine Seattle City Council members are up for re-election soon. Brandi asked what Cahill would like to see in candidates challenging the incumbents.

“We can’t keep defunding the police and then complain when they don’t respond,” Cahill said. “We don’t need them to stand down, we need them to stand up. We need city council members who believe that.

“We need to get police officers back working effectively in the city of Seattle.”

Cahill said we need to look at where our police officers are going and what they are being offered that we don’t.

“Why [are] our police officers going to Florida? Because they’re being offered something better. They’re being offered a better package,” Cahill said. “Nobody likes a cop until they’ve got the knife-wielding attacker coming through the window. And then all of a sudden everybody wants one.”

Cahill told Brandi about the time one of the Beacon Plumbing trucks was stolen with one of his employee’s tools onboard. He said he had a tracking device on it and went to find it.

Cahill found a man in his truck and when he started to drive away, Cahill drove after him.

“When the police saw me racing by they put their lights on and pulled up alongside me. I said ‘Come on, help me, please. Let’s get my truck back. I own Beacon Plumbing, I need some help.’

“And they said, ‘We can’t we have to stand down.’ I said, ‘Stand down?!’ I said ‘Well, I’m gonna stand up. I’m gonna go get my truck.'”

Cahill said he did it for all business owners. “We can’t let people do this to us,” he said.

And, yes, he did get the truck and the tools back.

As for the mayor, Cahill believes we’re headed in the right direction there.

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“We’ve got a mayor (Bruce Harrell) who is going to make a lot of changes, and already has made some changes for the good in the city of Seattle,” Cahill said. “I really, truly do believe in Harrell. He grew up in the same area I did in the central area of Seattle. He’s a hometown guy. He loves our city and he stepped in and I think he’s going to turn the city around and he needs our help doing it. And you know, when someone can turn a city around, they can probably turn a state around. Maybe turn the city around and we have Bruce Harrell for governor.”

Brandi said, “Let’s let him fix Seattle first.”

Listen to Dori Monson weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.