heroes because you are both successful business people who have experience in life and you could just kind of go away and just count your pennies couldn't you would be sort of boring does anyone do that i don't know all right well let's talk about seattle districts now this the idea of electing city council members in seattle by districts rather than at large has come up before how come you guys created a winner it was the map quite honestly it was the map people knew what they were voting for they could see a map we printed fifty five thousand copies of that map and we have about three thousand left that's how many went out through the city the map showed people what district they were going to live then the previous attempts at district ing didn't have a map they had on a committee it was going to be appointed by the city council to make a map and sometimes people don't always trust the way and the time frame not that they don't trust the council as to time frame and so they could vote for one year initiative this is a charter amendment and in seattle we are government is a city charter and that city charter is owned by the citizens of seattle they and only they can change that charter usually it's done by having a comity appointed by the mayor city council and charge or change like in the seventy's but this was one say charter amendment done by the citizens of seattle for good government and absolutely right on it was the map you could visualize it well i've got to tell you i have been in favor of this idea for quite some time frankly because when i moved here twenty one years ago i was really pretty surprised that that wasn't the way that council members were chosen they're not the only one well so that's that's what i'm asking is it's been defeated several times you talk about it was the map but what kind of i mean that you got sixty seven percent of the vote that's not tiny that was great we're all hoping for fifty plus one but i again say this is a charter amendment this was done by citizens not against something this was done by citizens for something they want to have somebody who represents them on city council and they believe it will happen better if those folks have to come back out to the same district that elected them and explain and talk to the citizens where did the idea come from for this charter amendment at this time well at the time we did the opposition to the car tab we know it came up and some people mentioned it and it's one of those things oh yeah yeah that's a great idea but it never really happened because we were too busy with the charter or with the car tabs and then actually i can't tell you how it came up i really don't recall i don't know that some of the guys some of the members of the committee that got acquainted you know started thinking about it and one gentleman that was very instrumental in helping us was john fox of the homeless coalition john is very much  appreciated in this city he does point out the problems of the homeless people have and he does work for them and he mentioned happened to mention to professor moral at the university of washington about the fact that it serves we should be districts but nobody's go buy it until it got a map and the professor ran with that idea and he tried nine districts he tried seven districts just two at large he tried six districts with three at large and the one that was the best that he could come up with was the seven two and that was because the population of each district has to be within one percent of each other and has readjusted every ten year census also he felt it was  less obtrusive in the traditional neighborhood areas snow other words that he didn't have to cut all of green lake in half or you know so that's what he came up with he showed it to john and then john the reason it came up there was they couldn't believe their city council and mayor were so different than what the people saw as far as what needs to happen transportation wise what you mean by that there was a big piece of money in that that was going to go to some more street car planning and some more street car doing whereas they saw if indeed har tabs are going to raise from twenty to sixty it all of a go on the streets to help metro run a little smoother and for gosh sakes they help the congestion problem that the city of seattle  to repair some bridges the magnolia bridge just been under monitoring for ten years because they are a little worried about the fact that it might fall down if too much weight gets on it in a one time ten years is a long time to monitor a bridge and then the south park bridge even though it did not belong to the city the city surrounds it and so if there had been a representative out there somebody on their side they could have called on the council to let's do something about it let's work out a program they worked out a program fine after it got down but those are things that this particular group thought were important so did so did this come idea come from transportation concerns or was there something else you know it was transportation a lot good it was there that there was no one that had any particular dislike of any particular council member they all respected them very much they worked very hard but it's pretty darn hard to know the needs of six hundred thirty thousand people and they care not free to always go out into a district and if there's so many districts in the city how can they go to all those places and find out what the needs of those places are they can have but they have committees so that they don't have to go out they don't have to be concerned about a geographic area said the chair of the communications committee if there is one could be person but it's impossible for tom rasmussen to go to every community in this city a were every district and ask him well what do you need what do you think is important people that are on the committee are in the same boat they're all all council members that are committee members now the people that work in that particular department might have an idea but they can't sanction it by going out because they're not that's not their job but bear in mind our city council is two things it's a policy place and it's a fund play and they get impacted on both of those by different people and it's very at present time downtown center and as a person who loves my downtown i love the idea that some of those issues are top on their mind but every corner of this town and i usually use the example of lake city to west seattle to white sand or to out here north beach needs to have the same oversight that will bring it together down there bear in mind north of eighty fifth no sidewalks no drainage there white sand or believe me someone who comes from the district south there is going to bring up the fact that we should be adding a piece of white center to finish out our piece of white sand or what stops at roxbury and believe me it's people who live out there think that's drange but they couldn't get one city council person to really look into that because it's very centrify all of those folks want better representation this is about better representation and that's what they saw and you need to remember that well thirty nine percent of the funding for the city of the entire city comes from downtown that's very valuable but that means the rest of it comes from the rest of the city so shouldn't they have some say and how the funds are spent but they don't right now but they will with districts what was the toughest argument that you had to face against this pla robo calls from one of them on our phones and it was you know to all women from the north end you know it's pretty i got named in every speech that that politician game and many times i was sitting there hoping nobody recognized me and that's kind of funny in seattle where we actually have supposedly a culture that says we want folks involved in government we want folks involved in these issues i'm asked all the time to come out and get myself involved in this that or the other thing but but somehow being involved in a good government issue was not something that a few folks thought was a good idea however i will tell you the seattle chamber of commerce they said hey go for it we're going to stand on the sidelines there were there really wasn't a big opposition and that's cool because it also means that now did not only did we get sixty seven percent of the voters but there isn't a strong opposition to doing this and we're going to see this implemented i believe you're to see the current city council out there sitting at tables in local libraries and local utility places i told s b u i said this is the way to get your city council up there to see what your issues are well actually that was a kind of a question that i have if you modeled after congress and there's not a whole lot of positives that a lot of people feel about congress right now but at least they have offices back in their districts and so are you expecting for us that's written into the petition so they have to have to respond to them and they have to live there and they have to live there one hundred twenty days before they even register grun for the office and if they should move during the term of their office they have to resign oh now we didn't go so far as term limits but that was brought up you know i'm not going to use the word that oh well the word but i'm going to ask you this were did everybody in your campaign committee look not only was it did it looked did they look different they were from all different parts of the say thank defaming think very differently and they're all but i think the one thing everybody came together on was a real commitment to seattle we didn't have any outliers we didn't have folks coming in from period to have this happen you know this was local all citizen activists yeah i think all people who feel they have some james bush james colmes and you do realize this is a fairly new thing that chill went into effect this year in fact most campaigns didn't know about it until they started printing materials and got it pointed out to him by the opposition usually by the opposition and it had to go on our signs and things which was complicated except that the signs have been previously ordered around so that we didn't have to energy going out to precinct meetings and and representing this it doesn't measure anything except dollars which i think gives it a fairly strange turn for a city that thinks that people should be able to address their government without a lot of dollars we're hoping that this means by going into districts that the people who choose to run for office now don't have to raise two hundred fifty thousand dollars or how much was richard pombo this time oh he was two hundred eighty six but the thing that was embracing it was for three hundred twenty thousand isn't it you know the thing that was interesting was that was our president murray spent seven hundred seventy six thousand dollars to get that office and again who lost the office laid out four hundred sixty six thousand dollars that's an unconscionable amount of money well i actually  research on the amount of campaign contributions for council just council elections over the past well the past five or six council elections and i was shocked at how much money the i think the average winner was was well over two hundred fifty out point out something to you and here's a couple of folks that didn't run this thing with the idea of a lot of money going into it it takes two hundred twenty thousand dollars to speak in writing six hundred thousand if you're going to do it and right where you do it at large you aren't going to do it was free publicity you aren't going to do it with free television or radio well you have to do it with something that goes out there whereas now we have taken it down to the point where they will be able to reach eighty eight thousand potential voters probably forty thousand households for a lot less money including the door bell and the dropping something on somebodies door you can't do that to six hundred sixty thousand if you're an individual we could do it with our math well that was kind of another thing is that the campaign seemed a little quiet that's probably because we didn't have severe opposition it's kind of funny how the buzz that happens in elections particularly with the press is only if there's a lot of rancor and ours just didn't have we're not we don't have any rancor i mean we're not against the people that are on the council where we're saying that your job is to difficult and we'd like to try to help the council members have more knowledge that's all we're not saying we're not saying rasmussen is wrong or commons or own or we're never say that we don't believe that we respect them but the job is just to hard you can't be expecting our guide to know the needs of six hundred thousand people in the city and every every block of the city every community of the city it's an impossible job this way it's bided let's let's compare to congress the congress elected by districts certainly i mean and they oftentimes represent more than six hundred thousand people but it's not exactly the same i get that at the same point in time congress i think most of the people would say are just fighting among themselves and looking to trade favors is and that's what's going to happen here well there's a whole big difference between being in washington d c and be awful for one thing these folks literally can do a day or so of their job in there just and just go i mean they have council meetings up the whole on monday afternoon the rest of the time why would somebody who's say the chair of the transportation committee meets in their own districts on these subjects or with the other members i'm talking about having to fly to washington d c and do the job famous talk about editorial board meetings when you went to them right when i went to the one of the times with with eugene wasserman are gentlemen that was running the campaign giving us telling us what to do basically who was on the other side you know i don't really know some people who were on the editorial board and that was all women it was three women and one reporter what kind of questions that the why same kind of questions you're asking us why don't you like the council you know what do you think this is going to do for the city and why did you spend so much money that sort of thing interesting so you said something also very interesting earlier on you you said that there seemed to be a common thread that ran throughout all of your supporters of they wanted to do something that was good for seattle yes and for years we hear a public exposure of kind of wondered if seattle was loved as much as it used to be well everybody's got their own idea of what they love and what they think spin i will say that it isn't a total agreement across the game but i would say seattle  blessed with a lot of active people who really relate to love their city you and i might not be able to agree on what they like but they love it and one thing they do love usually is the part of the city where they come from they understand it they know what their neighbors are worried about they get a little frustrated when where they come from and seattle is not perceived as being seattle in the big political regime down there so and that probably happens with the mayor as well you know that sometimes when he's talking about seattle it isn't the same seattle as maybe somebody who lives in lake city is thinking but they all kind of come together on that string ok what happens next with us i get calls from young men the young women who are thinking about running in a district already and it's really neat would we need young blood you know the city is changing so rapidly and we have so many young educated people living in this city or surrounding areas and we need to do some changing on the way that we do things in the city but city council actually hadn't changed very much and that of course with the defeat of richard conlon that's a big change though do you think that there was a relationship between the defeat of richard conlon and this district election being five terms that i will are beginning to realize that whereas you don't have written in term control current term limits there is a reason why folks who were these kinds of jobs should turn over on a fairly regular basis some part of the council should turn over because when you're you know they talk about be cognizant of how much the seattle demographic is changing but they sure don't represent and it would help them i think i think they'd have a better sense of for one thing i mean we talk about affordable seattle all the time i think they're a little  disconnected from whether or not seattle is affordable and i'm not just talking about homeless people i sit on a couple of seattle utility committees and it's amazing how might we  utilities now that's a fourteen percent hit on everybody's water bill that is making seattle less affordable i can't get anyone at the council to even talk about what kind of council person are you looking for in your area i'm not looking for one i'm sure one will show up or two or three or four well how do you think it's going to run i mean you said that people have and i don't mean who by name but you said that a lot of people are interested in running are were they involved in the campaign is that why they were no no no one and then involved in the campaign has even said this thing about running to tell you the truth but what i'm getting is phone calls from people saying well when does this start now and i'm thinking of running in what should i do and how soon should i start and i go i really don't know but the this is going to happen in two thousand and fifteen so if i was you i'd start thinking about it going to different meetings and getting acquainted with the people that you want to represent if you just ran a campaign that got sixty seven percent approval you're saying you don't know as to how to get somebody elected you know this is what we are going to if you're going to d is interested in running it's not in what i would perceive as my district it's a different district he's lived in seattle all his life but he might actually be living just a couple of blocks outside the city and i said that's not going to work or you need to live in your city that is absolutely part of this up till now i don't know that that was biggie then se condly he owns a business that's definitely in a district of seattle wouldn't that be nice if we have some small business people would be allowed to end up with representation because they can represent a district where their business is where they're well known and where they can apply what they consider important which i frankly gotta tell you small business representation in our city is lacking very much lacking what do you think was going and what did you think was the biggest negative that you were going to face i didn't think negatively of the whole this whole issue of well we voted on that before but see we handle that in our committee talking it through we had already established we were going to do something that had been done before we were doing something that was quite different it was a charter amendment it had a map and it had a determination that two years that's not a lot of time and the next time you're would and some are positioning themselves perhaps to run at large current people that are on the council it's in the guarantee they're going to get elected because there's going to be a lot of people we believe that are going to take a run at that district and try to get that job as a matter of fact we got a we got a dollar bill sent in to us last week some guy lost the bet that's a great way to close the shows that seattle district and now it's going to be able all right here in the seattle