Spady: Seattle’s ‘best’ isn’t good enough

We’ve all seen the headlines suggesting the City of Seattle is doing its ‘best.’ Like this one from Crosscut.com: Despite city’s efforts, Seattle police force is shrinking.

Yet again Seattle’s ‘best effort’ isn’t good enough. The police force lost 92 fully trained officers in 2018. That’s 32 more than 2017. The entire department shrunk by 41 people. Meanwhile, the population in the region continues to grow.

How is it that the city can be putting their ‘effort’ into this issue, and still losing officers?

Now let’s take a look at homelessness. This has been a big emphasis from our city for several years now. We’ve increased the overall budget by 60 percent and increased our spending on homelessness by more than 40 percent. Despite the ‘best efforts’ of Mayor Ed Murray, and now Jenny Durkan, homelessness has increased from 8,000 to 12,000 people out on our streets.

If this is the ‘best’ our city can do, then our politicians just aren’t good enough. We need to elect people in this city who are capable of making changes here in Seattle for the better, not people who spend more and more taxpayer money only to make things worse. We can’t just throw money at problems. We need to find real solutions. We need politicians who can do more because their ‘best’ just isn’t enough.