Seattle council candidate Sattler: ‘Listen and respond to constituents’

Seattle City Council candidate Ann Davison Sattler wants to change how things work on the dais, starting with members’ attention span.

A video surfaced this week of a public commenter at a Seattle City Council meeting. He was shocked at how little attention was given to him by council members. Presiding over the meeting was District 5’s Debora Juarez. Sattler is one candidate vying to take over Juarez’s place on the council in the 2019 election. She hopes to change the behavior she saw on that viral video.

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“Any elected official’s job is to listen and respond to their constituents — that is the basic responsibility of anyone elected to any position,” Sattler told KTTH’s Saul Spady on Thursday.

In the video, the public commenter — a man named Richard Schwartz — made a polite attempt to get city council members to pay attention to public comment. Instead, council members appeared to be staring down, some using their phones, with Juarez speaking only to remind him of his remaining time, and apparently scolding him for wasting it.

According to Sattler, that’s not at all uncommon in her district.

“The story I hear from every small business owner in District 5 I come across, is that any attempt to reach out to (Juarez) is met with silence, or not really a responsive answer to their concern,” she said.

Sattler previously worked as a caseworker in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., providing aid to constituents regarding military service, Medicare, and social security.

Now, she’s looking to come to the table on a platform built on her constituents.

“We have to get back to the basics of running our city, listening to our constituents, and working together — that means listening to people about their concerns.”