Teresa Mosqueda proposes amending Seattle’s charter to stagger council terms and prepare city for switch to even-year elections

In a few months, Seat­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Tere­sa Mosque­da is like­ly to be bid­ding the Emer­ald City’s nine-mem­ber leg­isla­tive body adieu when she makes the jump to the King Coun­ty Coun­cil, assum­ing she once again pre­vails over rival Sofia Aragon in the 8th Dis­trict Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion runoff.

Before she leaves, Mosque­da is putting on the table a thought­ful pro­pos­al to adjust the elec­tion tim­ing for Seat­tle’s eleven exec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive posi­tions. The pro­pos­al takes the form of a char­ter amend­ment that would be sub­mit­ted to vot­ers next Novem­ber (mean­ing, 2024, not this November).

The amend­ment would do two things:

• Stag­ger the terms of Seat­tle’s nine coun­cil posi­tions so that rough­ly half are up in one cycle and half are up in the oth­er cycle. Right now, the two at-large coun­cil posi­tions are elect­ed in one cycle (2021, 2025, etc.) and the sev­en dis­trict-based posi­tions are elect­ed in the oth­er cycle (2023, 2027, etc.)
• Pre­pare Seat­tle for the pas­sage of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute’s leg­is­la­tion to allow cities to tran­si­tion to even year elec­tions if they wish. NPI’s SB 5723, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Javier Valdez (D‑46th Dis­trict: Seat­tle) is cur­rent­ly parked in the Sen­ate Rules Committee.

The Finance and Hous­ing Com­mit­tee is due to receive a brief­ing on Mosqueda’s amend­ment tomor­row, Sep­tem­ber 14th, 2023.

If approved by vot­ers, the amend­ment would “reduce the terms of four Coun­cil seats (Dis­tricts 2, 4, and 6, and City­wide seat 9) to two years for one term only,” a staff analy­sis pre­pared by ana­lyst Lish Whit­son explains. “The effect of the change would be to have all even Coun­cil seats on the bal­lot in 2029 and 2033, and all odd Coun­cil seats on the bal­lot in 2027, 2031 and 2035.”

Posi­tions #2, #4, #6, and #8 would thus be elect­ed at the same time as the May­or and City Attor­ney, while Posi­tions #1, #3, #5, #7, and #9 would be elect­ed two years before / two years after every may­oral elec­tion cycle.

To the vot­er, bal­lots would look like this:

Cycle A

1. May­or
2. City Attor­ney
3. City Coun­cil — At-Large Posi­tion #8
4. City Coun­cil — Dis­trict (vot­ers in Dis­tricts #2, #4, and #6)

Cycle B

1. City Coun­cil — At-Large Posi­tion #9
2. City Coun­cil — Dis­trict (vot­ers in Dis­tricts #1, #3, #5 and #7)

Addi­tion­al­ly, lan­guage would be added to the Char­ter enabling the Seat­tle City Coun­cil to adopt an ordi­nance tran­si­tion­ing the city to even-year elections.

Whit­son explains:

The char­ter amend­ment placed on the bal­lot under the pro­posed Res­o­lu­tion would also autho­rize the Coun­cil to amend Coun­cil terms by Ordi­nance if the State autho­rizes or requires the City to have its elec­tions in even years. Even year elec­tions, because of the pres­ence of fed­er­al races on the bal­lot, gen­er­al­ly have much high­er turnouts than odd-year elec­tions. For exam­ple, in 2022, 70.3 per­cent of Seattle’s reg­is­tered vot­ers vot­ed, com­pared to 55.3 per­cent vot­ing in 2021.

This spring, the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture con­sid­ered leg­is­la­tion to autho­rize even-year elec­tions and may take up the issue again in the future. Rather than requir­ing a sep­a­rate Char­ter amend­ment to make such a change, the pro­posed Char­ter amend­ment that would be placed on that bal­lot would also allow the Coun­cil, by Ordi­nance, to adjust terms so that all elec­tions take place in even years. This sec­tion would apply to the terms of the City Attor­ney and the May­or as well as Councilmembers.

Empha­sis is mine. The sec­ond para­graph above is refer­ring to our Sen­ate Bill 5723, which had a suc­cess­ful pub­lic hear­ing in Feb­ru­ary and received a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion in the Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment Com­mit­tee.

Our team devel­oped SB 5723 to give cities flex­i­bil­i­ty. A city that wish­es to change its elec­tion tim­ing may do so either by refer­ring a res­o­lu­tion to the peo­ple or coun­cil­man­i­cal­ly, as long as doing so would not con­flict with the city’s char­ter. Most cities in Wash­ing­ton are what are known as “code cities” and do not have char­ters. A few cities, like Seat­tle, Spokane, and Taco­ma, are known as “first class” cities and have home-rule char­ters, which are like munic­i­pal constitutions.

In a recent guest essay for The Urban­ist, I explained how Seat­tle could change its char­ter to take advan­tage of SB 5723’s poten­tial pas­sage in the next leg­isla­tive ses­sion. Coun­cilmem­ber Mosqueda’s amend­ment would — in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing for stag­gered terms — amend Arti­cle XIX, Sec­tion 3 along the lines of what I had con­tem­plat­ed to enable a future switchover to even years to be approved by a vote of the Coun­cil. Here’s the mod­i­fied Sec­tion 3 language:

Sec. 3 TERMS OF ELECTIVE OFFICERS. The terms of the May­or, the City Attor­ney, and of Coun­cilmem­bers shall be four years, except when this Char­ter pro­vides oth­er­wise, or when an ordi­nance cre­ates short­er or longer terms to accom­mo­date mov­ing munic­i­pal elec­tions to even-num­bered years.

The pro­posed bal­lot title for the char­ter amend­ment is as follows:

THE CITY OF SEATTLE
CHARTER AMENDMENT NUMBER 30
City of Seat­tle pro­posed Char­ter Amend­ment No. 30 con­cerns terms of Councilmembers.

This mea­sure would cre­ate two-year terms for Coun­cilmem­ber posi­tion 9 (2025–2027) and posi­tions 2, 4, and 6 (2027–2029) so that sub­se­quent elec­tion cycles would elect even-num­bered Coun­cilmem­bers in 2029 and odd-num­bered Coun­cilmem­bers in 2031. The Char­ter would also be amend­ed to allow sim­i­lar flex­i­bil­i­ty by ordi­nance to accom­mo­date mov­ing munic­i­pal elec­tions to even num­bered years if per­mit­ted by state law.

Should this mea­sure be enact­ed into law?

Yes [ ]
No [ ]

Should SB 5723 and this char­ter amend­ment pass next year, Seat­tle would be able to start switch­ing to even-year elec­tions as soon as 2025, so long as the Coun­cil approved an ordi­nance autho­riz­ing a tran­si­tion by Jan­u­ary 15th, 2025.

The term stag­ger­ing por­tion of the amend­ment seems to assume that a tran­si­tion to even-year elec­tions would not hap­pen until the 2030s, after a tran­si­tion to stag­gered terms has occurred. In the event SB 5723 gets passed, how­ev­er, we think it would make more sense to accom­plish these tran­si­tions con­cur­rent­ly, so the city could take advan­tage of the ben­e­fits of even-year elec­tions more quickly.

Seat­tle could elect sev­en of its posi­tions, includ­ing the two exec­u­tive ones, to three-year bridge terms and the remain­ing coun­cil posi­tions to one-year bridge terms.

The tran­si­tion would look like this:

• 2025 > 2028 (three year bridge terms) 
  • May­or
  • City Attor­ney
  • Coun­cil At-Large Posi­tion #8
• 2025 > 2026 (one year bridge term) 
  • City Coun­cil At-Large Posi­tion #9
• 2027 > 2028 (one year bridge terms) 
  • City Coun­cil Dis­trict #2
  • City Coun­cil Dis­trict #4
  • City Coun­cil Dis­trict #6
• 2027 > 2030 (three year bridge terms) 
  • City Coun­cil Dis­trict #1
  • City Coun­cil Dis­trict #3
  • City Coun­cil Dis­trict #5
  • City Coun­cil Dis­trict #7

Posi­tion #9 would, under this scheme, be the first posi­tion to be elect­ed by Seat­tle vot­ers for a four-year term in a midterm cycle (2026).

Below is the memo and a copy of the pro­posed char­ter amend­ment ref­er­enced above, in case you’d like to read the mate­ri­als yourself.

NPI thanks Coun­cilmem­ber Mosque­da for offer­ing this amend­ment. With a few adjust­ments, this could set Seat­tle up per­fect­ly to take advan­tage of the leg­is­la­tion we have pro­posed to let cities choose their own elec­tion timing.