Burien animal shelter will clear tent encampment after City Council fails to reach agreement

After the Burien City Council could not come to an agreement about where to direct people living in an undeveloped park, the camp will be cleared by a group that leased the site and has plans to turn it into a dog park.

The Burien City Council chambers were hot with anger on Tuesday night. Ahead of the special meeting, Burien residents packed into City Hall, watched from an overflow room, and tuned in to a live stream online.

More than 30 people signed up to speak during public comment, and were about evenly split between being in favor of the camp removal and against it.

While commenters and councilmembers spoke, much of the crowd booed, jeered, and hollered out names. Groups of people broke into laughter after hurling insults at some of the public commenters.

Tuesday’s special meeting was called by the council to discuss what to do about a tent encampment in a nearby, unnamed park.

Earlier this month the council voted to lease the park to Burien C.A.R.E.S., a local nonprofit that plans to open a dog park at the site.

Soon after the lease agreement was announced, the King County Executive’s office sent a letter to the council saying the county would not assist in any camp removal efforts until Burien could offer the unsheltered people a place to go. The letter also said the King County Sheriff's Department, which Burien contracts for its police force, would not be present at the removal.

Before Tuesday night’s meeting, Burien City Councilmember Cydney Moore said, “I hope that the conversation tonight is a productive one and collaborative one. That would be a lovely and welcome change.”

But that's not how the meeting unfolded.

Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon rapped her gavel throughout the night to try and settle the raucous crowd. Councilmember Stephanie Mora accused councilmembers Jimmy Matta and Hugo Garcia of backroom dealings and being unethical when they said they'd contacted King County after receiving the letter about the camp removal.

At one point a woman turned around to a group that had been yelling at the Council and said, “Why don’t you shut the fuck up?”

A few motions and amendments were presented, including ones suspending the lease until the city could relocate the 30 or so people living in the park. There was discussion about accepting $1 million from King County to help fund the move and a local church willing to temporarily take the campers in.

After more than two hours of debate, however, the council adjourned with no agreement.

Immediately after the meeting, Aragon said, “Honestly, I think the core of the frustration is that there is literally no emergency housing in the county, because we have been looking for that diligently, desperately this entire time.”

“I’m pretty disappointed because I feel like it’s a whole lot of nothing burger,” Moore said as people filed out of the chambers. “At this time, the city is not choosing to take any particular action in terms of where people can go, what the next steps are, how we can keep people safe, or housed, or sheltered.”

The lease for the dog park starts Thursday, June 1. Moore and Aragon said they expect the animal shelter to remove people from the park starting Wednesday.