Public Safety: Downtown Seattle

Article contributed by Catherine Stanford, BOMA Government Affairs Contract Consultant

We know that our members have serious concerns about the lack of public safety, particularly in downtown Seattle. Your BOMA local advocacy team has been hard at work communicating these concerns to the Seattle Mayor and City Council and asking for additional resources. 

BOMA Letter to Seattle City Council

August 2020 Letter to Mayor Durkan

BOMA Letter to Councilmember Pedersen

It is challenging in this time of COVID, but we continue to reach out to individual Councilmembers to invite them to meet with us for more in-depth discussions.

These efforts are being supported and informed by the fine work of BOMA’s Public Safety Task Force (PSTF) under the leadership of Rebecca Uusitalo. The PSTF was established last year to determine the content and review the results of our public safety survey done last year.

BOMA Public Safety Survey Results

With the pandemic, and the continuing lack of commitment to ensuring public safety by the City, the problems in Downtown Seattle have been exacerbated. The PSTF came together again in August, with a focus on gathering information on current impacts and homing in on specific needs for our members and related-service providers; tenants; visitors.

There are two specific tools for information gathering that will be implemented soon.  One is an incident report for our members, the data will help us inform SPD and our elected policy makers.  This will be online and easy to complete.  The other is a second survey focused on who is impacted and what those impacts are.  We can then compare to last year’s survey.

All data -or information- submitted in these two reports will be shared in the aggregate and any property identifying information will be held in strictest confidence by the BOMA office.

We will continue to keep you updated with our progress.  Please be encouraged to share your thoughts and ideas.