From tax reform to National Guard intervention, here's what City Council Pos. 8 candidates want for Seattle

This November, Seattle voters will be casting ballots for the city attorney, three City Council seats, three school board positions, and the mayor.

Here's where the two candidates facing off for City Council's Position 8 — Rachael Savage and Alexis Mercedes Rinck — land on the top issues facing Seattle.

Rachael Savage

Savage has been a small business owner on Capitol Hill since 1998. She runs the crystal and incense shop Vajra on Broadway, and is a member of the Broadway Business Improvement Association.

Savage said she’s running for City Council because she is concerned by the increase in crime, fentanyl epidemic, and severe mental illness that have changed her neighborhood over the last 7 years.

“I had never really been into politics, but when this came to my doorstep and affected my business and my personal safety and my way of life, and I saw no one with new ideas, I felt compelled [to run],” she said.

Although the City Council is nonpartisan, Savage, who considers herself a “classic liberal,” has declared she’s running as a “Capitol Hill Republican.”

“The problems of drug addiction, crime, and mental illness in our city haven't been solved by the Democrats, who have been running this town for over 40 years. You can't blame Republicans [for the issue], so that's why I changed parties,” she said.

Public safety and drug addiction

If elected, the first thing Savage said she would do is amend the law so police can arrest people for public drug use, public drug possession, and other crimes associated with addiction.

She acknowledged that this “might sound harsh to some people.” She pointed to her own recovery and 35 years of sobriety as evidence of her expertise in what works to help those struggling.

“I've spent much of those 35 years helping others to escape from addiction and build a life worth living so they don't want to use drugs anymore,” she said.

Savage said she believes Seattle needs its own city jail and treatment center for addiction and mental health issues.

RELATED: Crime and drugs are Seattle voters' top concerns, new survey finds

“Jail means we can give people consequences for committing crime, because it doesn’t just affect the addict,” she said. “I think all the addicts I've worked with, they want to get clean. They're trapped, and I have a lot of compassion for that, and I know that addicts can get abstinent with the right structure.”

But Savage thinks these support systems shouldn’t be in downtown Seattle.

Savage has been an active opponent to the construction of the Downtown Emergency Service Center’s upcoming 120-unit supportive housing building on Belmont Avenue. She is in favor of sobriety requirements for supportive housing, rather than the housing-first approach.

She said neighborhoods with supportive housing suffer from the problems associated with drug addiction.

“Three parks just closed recently, and if you drive by any of these buildings, you see drug activity. You see drug dealers outside. You see people using fentanyl,” she said.

She thinks the goal shouldn’t just be to have people inside, but to move people to accept treatment through programs such as a meditation-based program she teaches.

“The mind of an addict is gripped with compulsion to use, and what I know is separation from drugs for long enough is the first thing that they need, and then we can teach people how to learn to live without acting on craving an obsession,” she said.

Savage’s plan would offer those arrested for using drugs in public the choice between a year of long-term residential treatment or a jail sentence. She believes this would “give the time to be separated from the drugs, to deal with the underlying issues as well the pain that they're trying to escape by acting on their addiction.”

As part of her plan Savage would also want addicts to be part of a work program that gives back to society by cleaning up graffiti and planting trees.

Savage reckons, “Seattle people definitely don't want to hear about President Donald Trump and his administration offering us anything.” But she believes the president's recent executive order on crime and disorder could benefit Seattle by helping the city change its approach to an abstinence based model, and offering the funding for it. She also believes the National Guard could help.

“They're good at building hospitals and staffing hospitals. If we have a treatment center put up by the National Guard for both mental illness and drug addiction, then the police can do their job.”

Police

Savage, who has called for tripling the size of the city's police force, has received endorsements from the Seattle Police Officers Guild and the union for uniformed police.

She did not offer a way to achieve that increase as the city faces a $200 million budget shortfall, but said she believes Seattle Police Department recruitment is down due to officers feeling a lack of morale if they’re not able to arrest people.

RELATED: How city leaders want to patch Seattle's $250 million budget deficit

Savage said she sees open drug use and possession in Capitol Hill and Chinatown and no one being arrested, despite the passage of the “Blake fix” in 2023, which makes possession of drugs a gross misdemeanor.

She said the statistics on falling crime rates in Seattle do not reflect what she sees every day living and working on Capitol Hill.

“I see assault. I see harassment. I see theft constantly at the store. Our grocery store now has armed guards,” she said.

To hear more from Savage about how she'd handle these issues, listen to her full interview with KUOW's Soundside here.

Alexis Mercedes Rinck

Rinck, who was elected to the Seattle City Council in a special election in 2024, said she’s running because of her upbringing. Born to teenage parents caught in cycles of substance use disorder, homelessness, and gang violence, she was raised by her grandparents and credits teachers in public schools, the Boys & Girls Club, and her local library for intervening when she needed it.

“I stand here today [as] a living testament to when we invest in working families and young people, regardless of their beginnings, we can change generations, and that's why I'm fighting for those investments every day on council,” she said.

Public safety

Rinck said effective public safety is about issuing the right response and doing so quickly. That means addressing the size and scale of the first responder workforce, including police, emergency medical responders, behavioral health professionals, or a combination of the three.

Rinck said she also believes in prevention. She called for investments in programs that support young people and minimize and address gun violence. She pointed to her work this last legislative session to push for the permit to purchase gun law which she thinks will help keep guns out of the hands of people who intend harm to others.

Last week, the Seattle City Council voted 7-2 in favor of expanding police surveillance camera usage throughout the city. Rinck and Dan Strauss were the two votes against the expansion.

RELATED: Seattle expands video surveillance despite public concerns about potential abuse

Rinck cited the city's constrained budget, a lack of evidence that the pilot program is working, and hearing from organizations, public commentators, and state legislators who were against the expansion as reasons for her opposition to the measure.

She said she's also concerned with data security and the potential for federal agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to obtain and use the footage for deportations.

Rinck introduced — and the council approved — an amendment to the legislation that creates a 60-day pause in the use of video surveillance if federal authorities attempt to subpoena footage for use in immigration cases.

Rinck called Savage’s plan to triple the police force, “unrealistic” and Savage’s enthusiasm for assistance from the National Guard in helping build centers to treat homelessness and drug addiction as a crime prevention measure to be “out of touch, out of date, and downright dangerous.”

Homelessness and drug addiction

Rinck previously worked as a policy analyst for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Rinck said she believes the housing first approach works, pointing to studies that strongly indicate that individuals put into housing stay housed.

But Rinck acknowledged supportive housing can become a magnet for substance use.

“We need to do better and we're going to need an all hands on deck approach, working both with our service providers and with the community,” she said.

Rinck said she wants to see investment at the state level to tackle behavioral health, especially at a time when many of the supportive housing programs are at risk of losing federal funding.

“We could be looking at thousands more people being exited directly to the streets,” she said. “That's the reality we're facing at this particular moment by having losses in federal funding for these programs.”

For Rinck, homelessness comes back to affordability.

“When you are living paycheck to paycheck, you are one life instance away from becoming unhoused yourself,” she said. “So the best thing we can do at this moment is work on addressing affordability so we can keep folks from becoming unhoused in the first place.”

Taxes

Rinck chairs The Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes, which identifies federal government policy that could threaten funding to the city of Seattle, and considers creating local funding to fill gaps created by federal funding losses.

“It became clear for my team we have to do something to deliver on the services that Seattle residents know, love, and frankly, depend on,” she said.

Rinck is crafting a business and occupation tax, which will set different tax rates and exemptions for different businesses.

RELATED: How Seattle could raise more money by lowering most business taxes

“We're offering tax relief to 90% of the businesses in Seattle and asking our top 10% largest businesses here to chip in a bit more,” she said.

The tax proposal goes to voters this November and is estimated to bring in $85 million, which Rinck said would be invested in the areas hit hardest by federal funding cuts, such as food access, gender-based violence services, and housing.

“I was proud to put this forward alongside the mayor, and I'm hopeful that Seattle voters agree that this is a measure that we need at this time and will create a lot of relief for small businesses while investing where it matters most,” she said.

Some business owners have raised concerns about the tax, which is based on gross receipts, which means businesses with small margins could be hit hard by the tax.

Rinck said she wants to talk with the state legislature in the next session about how to address those businesses’ concerns.

“I'm hopeful they see this as a value and, frankly, necessary investment back into the city where they have been able to build success,” she said.

Hear more about how Rinck plans to tackle these issues by listening to her full interview with Soundside here.