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Councilmember Kim-Khanh Van (second from left) makes a motion to put subject of Renton’s Blake Decision response into committee, at tonight’s council meeting.
Renton Chamber of Commerce CEO Diane Dobson spoke to council at tonight’s Renton City Council Meeting regarding her 4/23 letter, which I posted in my previous blog post. On behalf of herself and the Chamber, she asked council to urgently refer to committee the topic of the lack of legislative response to Blake Decision, and the need for a Renton solution. (Please see my previous posts here and here for more background on this request.)
Councilmember Kim-Khanh Van, Chair of Council’s Public Safety Committee, responded affirmatively to Ms. Dobson’s request during the agenda’s new business section a few minutes later. Councilmember Van moved to put the requested topic into a Council Committee, with the only difference from Ms. Dobson’s request being that she moved to send it to Committee of the Whole instead of Public Safety. She explained that she knew the topic needed a timely response, and she knew the whole council would want to weigh in, so she recommended going straight to Committee of the Whole. (Note that Committee of the Whole is attended by all seven councilmembers, and Public Safety Committee is only attended by three councilmembers.) The Council had a five minute discussion about the merits of referring to Committee of the Whole vs. Public Safety Committee, with several reasonable points brought forward in favor of each choice, and ultimately decided to send it to Committee of the Whole. During the discussion multiple councilmembers referred to receiving significant urgent input on this topic.
What is expected to happen next is the Mayor’s administrative staff will prepare a recommendation for Council action, and work with Council President Valerie O’Halloran to schedule a meeting on the topic. Hopefully a meeting will occur within a couple weeks or so (any Renton legislation that is implemented will typically have public notice and public hearing steps, and the state drug law sunsets on July 1). There will be no public comment allowed at Committee of the Whole meeting, but emails are accepted at any time, and public comment on this topic will be allowed at regularly scheduled weekly Council Meetings. Anyone wishing to email the Council on this topic can send their email to council@rentonwa.gov.
Tonight Kim showed complete lack of leadership in not asking for an emergency meeting of her committee and taking action immediately.
I guess Kim is afraid of losing the progressives support in the next election and chickened out. She could have done the right thing by asking for an ordinance that criminalized public drug use in our city. Shame on her for not stepping up and showing leadership! She doesn’t care about Renton, vote her out!
I hate to stand up for progressives, but progressives don’t like human misery.
11th LD Dems is filled with nutters. So nutty they make the 11th GOP look sane… and some of them don’t believe in round earth.
So Kim Kahn Van is chair of the public safety committee, and theoretically, she understands the damage that unfettered use of Fentynal use in the Retnon would do…..
And she punts it to a committee to get it off her plate.
A leader who cared for the community would start the process immediately so we could meet the deadline and not lose more lives than necessary. Making laws is messy and often isn’t pleasant, but it should have been done.
That’s what we pay council members for. To suggest, ratify, and modify laws to make our city a better place for all of us.
I’m tired of people phoning it in. Let’s get some changes done for the next election cycle.
It’s fascinating to witness the reactionary response to the Blake Decision and the subsequent call for a “Renton solution.” Fear and misunderstanding seem to drive the conversation instead of evidence-based reasoning.
Decriminalizing drugs can lead to numerous benefits for society. It’s time to step back and ask yourself why you are so afraid of decriminalization. The answer, in most cases, is fear—fear of the unknown, fear of change, and fear of losing perceived security.
However, decriminalizing drugs would help us rely less on law enforcement and create a more compassionate and practical approach to drug addiction.
We must resist the urge to cling to outdated, punitive measures and instead embrace the potential benefits of decriminalization. By doing so, we can work together to create a future where we rely less on law enforcement and more on evidence-based solutions that help those struggling with addiction.
Tell us you want to defund the police without saying defund the police. It’s a stupid idea, and it’s done horrible damage to Seattle and Portland. I can’t wait to vote KKV off of council and Carmen Rivera Next.
From what I’ve seen Ed and Ryan need a wake-up call or step off. The letter they signed with Carmen makes me wonder about them a lot. They both endorsed Joe Todd too so they may not be for Renton so much as for playing political games.
Have you had a sanity check lately?
Booooo! I am very disappointed with Councilmember Kim Khan-Van for bringing this issue before the council. It’s been studied for many decades that punishing addicts for their disease and locking them up doesn’t lead to long term recovery. Ever thought of increasing funding for mental health services instead? I know, wild idea of me there lol… So are we going to arrest other people who aren’t following doctor’s orders regarding other medical & mental health conditions?🤦♀️ Councilmember Van, I think you need to be better educated on substance use disorders by mental health professionals who treat this condition. Forcing people into treatment never works.
The point is to offer addicts help through the judicial system. Plus as a tax paying citizens, we need to feel safe from addicts allowed to use in public. We need to do something!
SD, so true “forcing” someone into treatment doesn’t work, but not requiring responsibility, you have a choice of either treatment or jailtime is the only way to encourage treatment or it encourages continued law breaking.
It wholeheartedly agree that just burying the problem was wrong. I do however thing there is a subset of fentanyl users that need a good reason to get treatment, principally the possibility of incarceration.
But when our leaders on the Public Safety Committee just punt then it hurts all of us even if we may disagree.
They should be locked up. Even if for a short period, at least they won’t be breaking into my house to feed their habit. Addicts aren’t capable of making their own decisions, so we need to make them for them, and for the safety of our community’s. They need to be held in custody for treatment for as long as it takes. Look at Seattle, they’ve tried everything to fix the problem. They’ve thrown millions of dollars at mental health and recovery programs and nothing, and I mean nothing has changed. Unfortunately it’s time for tough love.
I contacted the Renton City Council via email on this subject and to date have heard back from 2 of them.
https://www.rentonwa.gov/mayor___council
Thanks Dave for sending your opinion to council members. When I was on City Council I read every email I received from our residents, and many of them had a big impact on my decisions. I hope others will do the same, regardless of where they stand on these issues. Send to council@rentonwa.gov
Hmmmm…. Portugal 🇵🇹 has decriminalized all drugs… and they treat people like patients and not criminals…. Maybe America should recognize that it’s not criminal… it’s a society awakening not punitive…
The deadly nature of Fentanyl throws the equations out of whack.
I’m a fan of studying European solutions when working on problems, and the Portuguese approach to decriminalize drugs is worth studying. But their 20 year experiment has not been as successful as early data said it would be, and as the previous commenter said the deadly nature of new drugs is causing them to reevaluate. Furthermore, they were able to change the law evenly across the whole nation in a country that already has government funded medical treatment in place for all its residents. We’re talking about just legalizing in some cities in the US, without the medical infrastructure in place to take care of a large influx of drug users (many without medical insurance) that would be attracted to a location where they could legally use. Lastly it’s important to note that even at its most lenient, the Portuguese system used civil drug dissuasion panels that could fine drug users, take their professional and work licenses from them, and even take away some of their income sources if they didn’t go to rehab and get clean. That is much different than simply decriminalizing and running anti-drug health messaging. An article on the topic summarizes the situation as follows: ” Despite encouraging results, conclusions indicate that these policies are marked by contradictions and ambiguities that have permeated its history since the very beginning, and modest ambitions, particularly regarding the implementation of harm reduction measures. Moreover, the polemical Supreme Court judgment that reestablished, in 2008, drug use as a crime when the quantities at play exceeded those required for an average individual’s use for 10 days, might have impacted the landscape of drug use penalization. The last decade saw an increase of punitiveness targeted at drug users, including criminal sentences of jail terms.” Here is the article: https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13011-021-00394-7
I must say that Councilmember Kim-Khanh Van, as Chair of the Public Safety Committee, could have done more to address the Blake Decision’s consequences. The urgency of finding a Renton solution cannot be overstated, considering the fentanyl crisis in King County.
Although Councilmember Van has taken some action by moving to discuss the matter in the Committee of the Whole, the Public Safety Committee, which includes Van, should have taken the lead.
Now, we wait for administrative staff to prepare recommendations and schedule a meeting on this topic. We must keep in mind the urgency of the situation
It is crucial we communicate to the council to ensure the best possible outcome for the people of Renton.
Greg
Agree. She is not a leader! I hope she doesn’t get re-elected.
A Facebook user read this blog post, and asked for clarification of the number of committee meetings that might be required to adopt a local drug law. Here was the answer I provided:
The Mayor and his staff have probably already begun work on a proposed ordinance. I would expect them to let Council President O’Halloran know when they’ll be ready to present it, in a week or two at the Committee of the Whole. Hopefully the council gives it preliminary approval at that meeting. If they do, then a public hearing will be scheduled a week or two later, and an ordinance can be brought forward to the council for adoption a week after that. The ordinance will have to be read and approved twice, at two different meetings. So the whole process from now until approval could easily take six weeks, even if everything goes well. After adoption, there may need to be a 30 day wait before it takes effect for it to be published and the public to be informed (you can’t arrest someone the day after a law passes if you have not told them about it). So, it’s going to be hard to have it in place by July 1 even if the council goes along with it.
The council is not entirely predictable on this, because three council members signed a letter six months ago indicating they were against criminalization of certain low-level offenses, and their letter seemed to imply drug offenses. It takes four votes to pass a normal ordinance, but five votes to pass an emergency ordinance with an accelerated schedule. So anyone who wants a law in place before the July 1 expiration of the state law should encourage the council to support a new law, and do it quickly. Send emails to council@rentonwa.gov
Look at this: https://www.rentonreporter.com/news/break-ins-at-sipstopcaf-spark-public-safety-conversations/
Kim Kahn Van is now playing “good cop” – but when leadership is required on the Public Safety Committee she passes the buck. Because of her inaction it very well could be that Renton has legalized drug use *in public* in just two months.
Make no mistake, KKV was the only council member to endorse Carmen River’s explicit calls to “Abolish and Defund the Police” when it look like being a crazy seattle socialist was the smart political move.
Now that nobody wants that BS, she’s pretending to be Mrs. Law And Order, we all can see that it’s fake because she didn’t do anything as chair of the Public Safety Committee.