Washington State Senate unanimously passes much needed school seismic safety grant bill

Hap­py news to share out of Olympia tonight: All forty-nine Wash­ing­ton State sen­a­tors have vot­ed to pass a bill that would estab­lish a grant pro­gram to upgrade seis­mi­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble school build­ings in Wash­ing­ton State, pro­vid­ing sore­ly need­ed funds to ensure our kids have safe facil­i­ties to learn in.

Prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor David Frockt (D‑46th Dis­trict: Seat­tle), Sub­sti­tute Sen­ate Bill 5933 would pro­vide fund­ing for school dis­tricts and state trib­al com­pact schools to use in reme­di­at­ing seis­mic or tsuna­mi haz­ards in qual­i­fy­ing build­ings. The ver­sion of the leg­is­la­tion adopt­ed by the Sen­ate explic­it­ly states that ver­ti­cal evac­u­a­tion tow­ers (which some coastal school dis­tricts wish to build) are an eli­gi­ble reme­di­a­tion solu­tion for schools in tsuna­mi haz­ard areas.

SSB 5933 is one of NPI’s top ten leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties for the 2022 session.

Our research finds that a major­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers (52%) think that upgrad­ing seis­mi­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble schools is pri­mar­i­ly a state respon­si­bil­i­ty, rather than a local respon­si­bil­i­ty (29%). We released our find­ing last week.

Thank­ful­ly, the Leg­is­la­ture is listening.

“Hun­dreds of school build­ings across the state, from tsuna­mi zones on the coast to seis­mi­cal­ly active areas inland, face a high risk of seri­ous dam­age,” said Frockt.

“Low-prob­a­bil­i­ty but cat­a­stroph­ic risks like earth­quakes and tsunamis are some of the hard­est for com­mu­ni­ties to guard against.”

“The cost is high, and the like­li­hood for any one town is that its schools will be spared a dis­as­ter, mak­ing it hard to jus­ti­fy funding.

“But when mul­ti­plied by all the com­mu­ni­ties in poten­tial­ly geo­log­i­cal­ly active areas across our state — one with an unusu­al­ly high risk of seis­mic activ­i­ty, as Mt. St. Helens demon­strat­ed so last­ing­ly — this prob­lem is urgent.”

We whole­heart­ed­ly agree, and we thank Sen­a­tor Frockt for intro­duc­ing this leg­is­la­tion and shep­herd­ing it through the Sen­ate. It’s not every day that a bill with a scope this big gets a 49–0 vote of approval! Because the roll call was unan­i­mous and no sen­a­tors missed the vote, there are only yeas:

Roll Call
SB 5933
School seis­mic safe­ty grants
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
2/9/2022

Yeas: 49

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Braun, Brown, Car­lyle, Cleve­land, Con­way, Das, Dhin­gra, Dozi­er, For­tu­na­to, Frockt, Gildon, Hasegawa, Hawkins, Holy, Hon­ey­ford, Hunt, Keis­er, King, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, Lovick, McCune, Mul­let, Muz­za­ll, Nguyen, Nobles, Pad­den, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rivers, Robin­son, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Schoesler, Sefzik, Shel­don, Short, Stan­ford, Trudeau, Van De Wege, Wag­oner, War­nick, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire), Wil­son (Lyn­da), Wil­son (Jeff)

It’s great to see this bipar­ti­san show of sup­port from all of our elect­ed sen­a­tors. Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans came togeth­er tonight to do some­thing real­ly, real­ly good for the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State. This is a vic­to­ry worth toasting!

We are absolute­ly elat­ed and look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our advo­ca­cy for this impor­tant cause in the State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives with Ger­ry Pol­let, Liz Berry, and our oth­er cham­pi­ons. If the House pass­es the bill with no changes before the end of ses­sion, it would go to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee to be signed into law.

With levy and bond mea­sures in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­u­ing to fail, this leg­is­la­tion will be a life­line for many Wash­ing­ton school dis­tricts that have strug­gled to fig­ure out how to upgrade or replace decrepit, unsafe build­ings that were built decades ago but remain in use today.

Onward!