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Mayor Murray takes your calls on immigration, homelessness and more

caption: Seattle Mayor Ed Murray in the KUOW studios.
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Seattle Mayor Ed Murray in the KUOW studios.
KUOW Photo/Bond Huberman

Bill Radke speaks with Seattle Mayor Ed Murray about current issues facing the city including being a sanctuary city for immigrants, tackling a West Coast homeless problem, ensuring affordable housing, preserving the culture in neighborhoods facing rapid gentrification and bringing a new sports team (and arena) to the city.

About that sports team:

Bill Radke: "I want to ask about the new proposed sports arena: Sodo or Key Arena?"

Murray: "I'm willing to work with anybody who can bring us a team. And so far what we've heard from Chris Hansen is he'd really like that arena, but he himself is not going to bring us a team.

"So we have several questions to sort out here. One is the city has a resource that the taxpayers are going to pay for one way or another, and that's Key Arena. Is that a possibility? And again, is someone going to actually bring us a team?

"If that doesn't work, Sodo is still an option. But again, someone is going to have to identify who's going to actually pay to bring us a team I think for me to be able to get anything through [the City] Council."

Issues discussed (with minute markers)

  • Concerns about President-elect Donald Trump (1:00)
  • Tackling homeless crisis (2:45)
  • Affordable housing and rental laws (7:25)
  • Replacing Tim Burgess on the Seattle City Council (9:50)
  • Fighting Trump's immigration policy (11:00)
  • Upzoning and city densification (12:40)
  • Sodo or Key Arena? (13:50)
  • Winning back working class voters to the Democrats (14:50)
  • Threat of HUD funding being cut to sanctuary cities (17:10)
  • Getting homeless kids into housing (18:45)
  • Lessons to learn from other cities with a homeless crisis (19:20)
  • Progress on building and preserving affordable housing (21:25)
  • SNOW in Seattle and salting streets (22:20)
  • Growing segregation in Seattle (24:45)
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