The winning candidate this November will complete the final 13 months of Teresa Mosqueda’s term instead of serving the usual four years on the Council. Then the seat will be up for reelection again at the end of 2025.
After Mosqueda was elected to the King County Council, Woo was temporarily appointed by the City Council in January. Woo had previously lost against Tammy Morales in the November 2023 Council election.
Rinck is an assistant director at the University of Washington working on the state budget and policy issues. She also has support from the Progressive People Power (P3 PAC) and beat incumbent Woo by nearly 12% in the August primary. She previously held engagement and policy-analyst positions at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and the Sound Cities Association.
The debate, sponsored by the Washington State Debate Coalition and held at Seattle Central College, was moderated by Josh Cohen of Cascade PBS, along with journalists from FOX13 and KUOW.
Rinck is a renter who doesn’t own a car and primarily uses the bus to get places. Woo grew up in Beacon Hill, is an alumnus of Seattle Central College and now lives in the Rainier Valley. Here are five ways they agree or disagree about what solutions are best for Seattle’s needs.
What they agree on
Both want a streetcar to connect South Lake Union to First Hill. They want more services for homeless people, improved pedestrian safety and alternatives to police for people in crisis, but they do not agree about how to pay for these initiatives.
They also agree that the Seahawks will win the Superbowl in the next five years and that the Mariners will win a World Series in the next 20.
How to invest in public safety
They also agree that the Council needs to do more to make Seattle a safer place. Rinck advocates for building a public safety system with quick response times and working with the state Legislature for new policies and money.
Woo is pushing for what she calls a “comprehensive solution” through fully staffing police officers, firefighters, social workers and investing in local community groups to do some intervention on the streets.
On the topic of police hiring, Rinck wants to hire locally and invest in officers with cultural competency and de-escalation training to better serve diverse communities.
“This is not unique to Seattle, so how are we investing and making sure we invest in the front end, because we want to grow our own pool locally and homegrown workers tend to stay, so I support those kinds of investments,” Rinck said.
She also expressed concern about police culture and said that may be one reason it has been difficult to attract enough officers. She said making sure the Council requires police accountability will help with that culture.
Woo supports Mayor Harrell’s plan to fully staff the police departments and suggested ways to increase the police force: hiring bonuses and hiring female officers and people who “look like us in the community.”
She also pushed for initiatives like the latest Stay Out of Drug Areas (SODA) legislation, which intends to stop public drug use and sales in parts of the city, as well as the Stay Out of Area of Prostitution (SOAP) zone along Aurora Avenue in north Seattle. But Woo, who says she has learned a lot from riding along with police officers on patrol, also wants to get more regular people involved in making the city safer.
“I know there are a lot of communities facing the problem of overpolicing [and] underpolicing, but I think it’s going to take a partnership, not just police and City Council, but the community as a whole,” Woo said.
The two agreed that the Council needs to address the issue of gun violence in the city, especially when it comes to kids getting guns.
Woo wants to create opportunities for young people to “ignite their passions” instead of falling into gangs or crime by investing in entrepreneurship opportunities and engaging with local community organizations.
Rinck said she wants to ensure children are not struggling with basic needs like housing and food insecurity and wants to see more support of community organizations; she criticized the Council for not spending enough on mental health support for youth.
Failing to address homelessness
Both gave the Council a failing grade for its lack of success to address homelessness in the city. “My opponent here wrote the five-year plan for the King County Regional Homeless Authority, a plan that would have cost the city $12 billion, and we could all agree that this organization has not produced a meaningful result,” Woo said. She shared that reforming the regional approach and how it is implemented would be a better way to approach homelessness in the city.
In one of just a few tense exchanges during the debate, Rinck answered that criticism by saying if Woo had read the report she would have seen that the $12 billion was for building more housing, and the rest of the recommendations could be paid for with existing budgets.
Woo talked about volunteering and providing aid for homeless populations in the city, and said building trust with these communities by sending more social workers to help people in encampments to encourage into shelter would help.
Rinck agreed with Woo that more social workers and case managers should be on the streets helping homeless communities, but the city needs to pay fair wages to slow employee turnover and bring some continuity to services city organizations are offering.
Solving the other side of the problem
Rinck, a renter, said, “We need to be building housing in every neighborhood across our city.”
Woo mostly agreed that housing needs to be built everywhere, but only after listening to the needs of communities.
Both candidates talked about the need to improve public transit and make it safer to walk all over Seattle.
How to pay for everything
Rinck talked about the need for more revenue to pay for these necessities, but said any new taxes need to make the tax system more fair, adding to the tax responsibilities of corporations and the wealthy. “I keep mentioning that Washington state has the second most regressive tax code. The only state with a more regressive tax code is Florida, and Washington is not Florida. We are not Florida in how we invest in our values, and so making sure that we have corporations pay what they owe,” Rinck said.
Woo said property taxes are too high and said many seniors with fixed incomes can’t afford to pay the rising costs. She proposed exemption or rebate programs to combat this issue.
The two had opposite opinions on city budgeting. Rinck talked about her experience dealing with the UW’s whopping $10 billion budget, balancing various departmental needs, and said her experience will help address budget challenges and the city’s fiscal health in the years to come.
Woo said her experience as a small business owner has made her more practical. Rather than attempting to raise more money, she is pushing for cutting programs in the existing budget.
“Asking for more taxes should be a last resort, not the first resort,” Woo said. “We need long-term solutions, not short-term fixes.”
She pushed for keeping essential services and ensuring things remain affordable for residents.
