With the elections of Eddie Lin and Dionne Foster as well as the reelection of Alexis Mercedes Rinck, the new Seattle City Council is taking shape. Amid all the other committee leadership changes, Councilmember Rob Saka will remain Chair of the Transportation Committee while Councilmember Rinck will join as Vice-Chair and Dionne Foster, Bob Kettle and Eddie Lin as members. Starting January 15, they will meet the first and third Thursdays of each month at 9:30 a.m. in Council Chambers.
Because Foster sent former Council President Sara Nelson packing with a landslide 62-37 win, the Council had to elect a new President. With new Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson sitting in the Council Chambers audience like a regular Seattle resident, the Council voted unanimously to select Joy Hollingsworth for a two-year term.
Here’s a tip to any of you who are new to following local city government: The committee meetings are typically much more interesting and enlightening than the full Council meetings. Except for the most controversial votes, full Council meetings contain a lot of boring grandstanding and backpatting while the actual decisions have mostly been made previously in committees and are merely formalized during full Council meetings. With rare exceptions, Council actions that get a full committee recommendation are almost certain to pass the Council without further significant changes. Committee meetings are also where the really interesting agency briefings happen, proving a chance to hear from SDOT staff, for example, as they explain the rationale behind agency decisions and field questions from committee members.
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Not only will some of the committee members change, but many of the names and governing responsibilities of the committees will also change. The groupings don’t even always make sense. For example, the Transportation Committee will now be grouped into the Transportation, Waterfront and Seattle Center Committee. Under the previous chair Alex Pedersen, it was the Transportation and Utilities Committee. Under Mike O’Brien it was the Sustainability and Transportation Committee. It’s a little odd that Parks and Seattle Center will be in different committees since I usually think of them being linked together, but committee assignments are based, I assume, on a secret ritual probably involving robes and chanting and psilocybin, and we all just need to trust in this process. The mushrooms always reveal what’s best.
Here are the committee assignments for 2026–27:
- Finance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments – Chair Strauss, Vice-Chair Rivera
- Housing, Arts, and Civil Rights – Chair Foster, Vice-Chair Lin
- Human Services, Labor, and Economic Development – Chair Rinck, Vice-Chair Foster
- Land Use and Sustainability – Chair Lin, Vice-Chair Strauss
- Libraries, Education, and Neighborhoods – Chair Rivera, Vice-Chair Hollingsworth
- Parks and City Light – Chair Juarez, Vice-Chair Kettle
- Governance and Utilities – Chair Hollingsworth, Vice-Chair Juarez
- Public Safety – Chair Kettle, Vice-Chair Saka
- Transportation, Waterfront, and Seattle Center – Chair Saka, Vice-Chair Rinck