‘An F to a D does not mean we are done’: Chamber of Commerce CEO on Seattle’s public safety crisis after a summer of shootings

Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Joe Nguyen co-signed a letter last week with more than 30 business leaders, including executives from Microsoft, Nordstrom, Starbucks, Costco, and Alaska Airlines, demanding a 100-day public safety action plan from Mayor Katie Wilson.

The letter cited data showing Nordstrom’s downtown flagship store gets a police response to just 29% of its 911 calls, compared with 100% at its Bellevue and Southcenter locations.

Nguyen joined Gee Scott on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio to talk about the letter, the city’s economic slide, and what he thinks elected officials are getting wrong.

“When you look at the tax base in Seattle specifically, and also largely the state as well, almost 70% of the tax base comes from economic activity: payroll taxes, B&O, sales tax,” Nguyen said. “We have to care about a strong economy if we also care about progressive values. They’re not separate. They have to be done together.”

Nguyen is a former state senator who supported taxes the chamber didn’t always back. When asked what he understands about business now that Nguyen didn’t as a senator, he said the focus has shifted from gathering resources to delivering results.

“What Senator Joe Nguyen was focused on was how do we have resources to deliver for our communities,” Nguyen said. “Joe Nguyen now wants to make sure that we are actually delivering for our communities. Oftentimes, what we see in the progressive community is more lip service.”

On the Nordstrom 911 stat, Nguyen said the number speaks for itself.

“Nordstrom’s is an institution in this region. They helped found the city,” Nguyen said. “The fact that they can’t even get a response,  there’s a whole bunch of reasons for why that might be the case, but that was a pretty clear example of how we’re not doing a good enough job.”

He said the World Cup showed what Seattle can do when it coordinates, but the progress didn’t last.

“We saw this tremendous outpouring of support from the communities. We saw public safety being prioritized because we’re seeing visitors from across the world,” Nguyen said. “Almost immediately afterwards, you saw it kind of backslide a little bit. Going from an F to a D or a C does not mean we are done.”

Nguyen says businesses aren’t the enemy; they’re part of the same ecosystem

Nguyen was asked how the average worker making $70,000 or $80,000 a year should feel about the business community’s concerns, and he said the two are connected.

“We were talking to a small business catering company in Seattle that we partner with, and she was saying that 50% of her clients are actually Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing,” Nguyen said. “There’s a whole ecosystem that exists. This is not an us versus them. The things that benefit small companies will also impact the big companies.”

On whether Seattle is losing businesses because of its policies or whether the threat is exaggerated, Nguyen pointed to numbers from the mayor’s own office.

“It compared similar jobs, if you were to have them in Bellevue versus Seattle, and it’s about $12,000 to $17,000 more to have a job in Seattle versus Bellevue,” Nguyen said. “If you’re a company and you’re looking at where to put your next 100 jobs, it’s pretty easy to kind of tell where it’s at.”

He said what businesses want most is stability.

“Most businesses have forecasts, have pro formas that go out five, 10, 15 years,” Nguyen said. “If all of your numbers change in a very short period of time, and you’re also getting rhetoric that says, ‘We don’t really welcome a lot of these folks in the communities here,’ then it becomes tricky to want to invest in a certain spot.”

Nguyen grew up in White Center in a Vietnamese refugee family, lived in public housing and watched his parents run small businesses. Behind his desk is a photo of the boat his family used to escape Vietnam.

“I grew up in an environment that I would not wish upon my worst enemy,” Nguyen said. “Being privileged enough to even serve in this role where I have a team, and I have staff, and I have resources to do good work, this is like a vacation compared to growing up.”

He was asked to make one change to Seattle with no council vote and no legislature; Nguyen didn’t hesitate.

“A lot of our elected officials have abdicated their responsibility to govern,” Nguyen said. “They basically outsourced leadership to advocates. If I could do one thing for the city of Seattle, it’s to make sure you remember who sent you to office and why you are there. It is to advocate for the people, not for special interest groups.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.