A vaccine deadline, a streetcar, and a shakeout, this week

Bill Radke discusses the week's news with Seattle Channel's Brian Callanan, Crosscut's Hannah Weinberger, and Fox13's Jennifer Lee.

This week, Washington State head football coach Mike Rolovich was dismissed from the team. Rolovich was the highest paid public employee in the state of Washington, making around $3 million a year, and was asked to leave the team when he failed to comply with the state’s vaccination mandate. Rolovich has since said he plans to take legal action against the university, as he has 15 days to submit an appeal following a dismissal. What is Rolovich’s legal argument? Rolovich’s story has been in the news since he first announced he wouldn’t be getting vaccinated earlier this year -- what’s been so captivating about his story? What will the fallout of his decision be? While Rolovich may be the highest paid of the bunch, he’s certainly not the only public employee to lose employment for not being vaccinated.

On Monday, the state’s vaccination deadline, over 1,800 public employees in Washington state were terminated or quit. This includes nearly 6% of Washington State Patrol workers, and 4.5% of Department of Corrections workers. Around 4.6% of state workers will work with accommodations that allow them to be unvaccinated. What legal challenges is the state seeing for these terminations? Can workers receive unemployment in this scenario? What are the ramifications of Washington losing 3% of its public workforce?

While we’ve passed the deadline for the state and city worker vaccine requirement, there’s another on the horizon: starting October 25th businesses across King County will be required to verify customer’s COVID vaccine status or negative COVID test from the last 72 hours. And the countywide health order isn’t just for crowded indoor spaces, like restaurants or bars. Outdoor events of more than 500 people, indoor recreation centers like gyms and public pools, and performing arts venues are also required to check people at the door. Restaurants and bars actually have a bit more time to prep - their vaccine check requirement doesn’t come into effect until December 6th. What will this new requirement actually look like for businesses? Is it ethical to require private businesses to enforce these rules? If someone refuses to comply, what is the business supposed to do? We’ve all seen the videos of service staff being yelled at, harassed, or even assaulted for enforcing COVID restrictions - what is the county doing to make sure that doesn’t become a more common occurrence with these new requirements?

Finally, a happier COVID related story - this week Federal Way resident Hector Garcia got to head home, after a year battling COVID in multiple hospitals. He became sick last year in October and spent 130 days in the ICU and 304 days on a ventilator. His family was making funeral arrangements at one point, but this week he returned home to finish out his recovery. How did Hector pull through a full year in recovery? What are his plans now that he’s finally out of the hospital?

This Thursday was our annual Great Shakeout drill - a time when you take a moment to sit under your desk, and try to imagine what you would do if the big one hit right now. If you’re like me, living in a brick apartment building, you might be feeling a bit unprepared. A report from KUOW this week says that 50% of Seattle’s old brick buildings are in need of seismic repair work. That works out to around 648 buildings total. While I may not be feeling quite prepared, one Seattle volunteer group is making sure they’re ready to go: the Seattle Emergency Communication Hubs Network. The network was created following the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, which resulted in collapsed buildings and at least one death. There are currently 66 volunteer manned hubs in the city, and every year they hold an annual field exercise to streamline how they’ll assist people during a disaster. Because there are plenty of problems to prep for - no power, downed bridges, collapsed buildings, and large fires are just a few of the things that could happen should there be a major quake along the Seattle fault line. But what exactly can a neighbor do in a situation like that? How will these 66 hubs help in an emergency? And do you feel prepared for the big one? What are you doing to make sure you’re ready should something happen?

All the hype right now is around light rail expansion, but don’t forget that Seattle has two streetcar lines in operation. The mayor’s budget certainly hasn’t forgotten, as the streetcars were a prime point of transit fund in the region. In 2018, the city paused the Center City Connector project, which would bridge the two lines, after costs continued to rise. In 2019 Mayor Jenny Durkan decided to push forward on the project, agreeing to a new cost estimate and dedicating more funding for planning. She tasked the city council with finding a solution to the cost shortfall. In Durkan’s proposed 2022 budget, the City Connector would get $2.4 million to bring the project back up to date, and was funded by the new ridehailing fee. The newly proposed funding was a point of contention with the city council, who argued that the project was “redundant” with prior work. What’s at issue for the city council in this funding? What does this ultimately mean for the progress of the city connector? What level of priority is this transit project for the city considering other transit projects?

Remember when we all promised a utopic traffic future, where self-driving cars whisk us to meet-ups and eradicate rush hour backups? Amazon remembers. The company announced Monday that it would begin testing its brand of self-driving cars, named Zoox. But as previous tests from Tesla, google, and others have shown, safety is of prime importance here, as pedestrians have been hit by self-driving vehicles since the technology first rolled out. Zoox plans to rollout as many as four vehicles in Belltown, South Lake Union, and downtown neighborhoods. Who is raising concern over the use of AVs (autonomous vehicles)? What are their concerns? And Amazon’s response? Anything the city or state is doing to ensure protection from these kinds of vehicles? How close is this technology to actually impacting traffic in Seattle?

The elections are less than two weeks away, and a new poll from the Northwest Progressive Institute says that a lot of Seattle’s more conservative politicians are in the lead. In their newest poll mayoral candidate Bruce Harrell leads Lorena Gonzalez by 16 points, and Republican Anne Davidson leads abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy by 19 points in the Seattle City Attorney race. There is one notable exception to this trend - city council position 9 candidates Nikkita Oliver and Sara Nelson are neck in neck, with just a 4 point difference between them. Why do you think this one race stands out? What is Oliver doing that their fellow progressive candidates aren’t? And how closely should we follow these polls, anyway? Are they likely to be right about how people will vote over the next two weeks?