Mayor-elect Durkan makes City Hall plans

“I will tell you one thing and I know you agree with me, I love Seattle,” Mayor-elect Jenny Durkan shouted to a cheering crowd on election night.

In Wednesday’s results, Jenny Durkan maintained a 20-point lead over Cary Moon, who conceded the race shortly after the results were released.

Goodnight Moon: Durkan rises to become next Seattle mayor

KIRO 7 sat down with Durkan as she looked ahead to moving into City Hall.

“It’s going to be a very busy life, and I think that really sunk in this morning when you get up and you start doing a mental list of all the things you have to get done just to get ready to get things done.”

She has just three weeks to get ready to become Seattle’s 56th mayor.

Asked what she is going to do on her very first day, Durkan responded, “We laid out I think some bold and progressive ideas in this campaign. You know we want to have rental vouchers, in the hands of people particularly those who are on the waiting list. We want to build a thousand tiny houses. We want to really move on the homelessness issue. And we want to deliver the SeattlePromise so that every kid who graduates from Seattle Public Schools can get free tuition.”

Durkan will oversee a population of more than 700,000 people, served by a city workforce of 12,000.

“I think the voters sent a very clear signal that they expect progress and I heard this in every room I was in for the last six months.”

She knows voters want action, now.

“We’re in the microwave generation, everything should just take a minute. To build the kind of deep systemic changes we need will take time. It will take time to build more affordable housing, and time to really figure out how do we get people off the streets and into long-term housing to get them the support services they need.”

Durkan says she hasn’t decided anything about current city department heads except one. She has told police Chief Kathleen O’Toole that she would like her to continue in the job.

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