Tag: seattle

Seattle’s new $20 minimum wage claims 6th restaurant casualty since New Year

Seattle’s new $20 minimum wage for 2025 has caused a 6th restaurant to close since the new year.

Pike Place Market bakery The Confectional closed on Sunday after 18 years in business.

Owner Destiny Sund told KIRO News Radio, “I wanted my team to have a wonderful holiday season, so I didn’t mention to them that we would be closing until after New Year’s Day. So this has been a long week for all of us at The Confectional.”

The minimum wage for all employees in the city limits, regardless of business size, jumped to $20.76 on January 1. Last year, if a worker earned at least $2.72 per hour in medical benefits or tips, the business only had to pay its employees $17.25 per hour, but now, for those businesses that featured tips, the change to the minimum wage was a 20 percent increase. The Emerald City’s increase is $4 more than Washington State’s minimum wage requirement.

Sund added, “That allowed businesses 50 employees or under to subtract $2.00 from the minimum wage. If they could make it up in tips and or benefits. And my employees did make that up in tips.”

She continued, “And just doing the math with the additional increase and the loss of the tip credit, it would cost my business an additional $18,000. And that’s just not sustainable.”

At least five other restaurants in Seattle have closed or are closing just days after the city council’s new minimum wage law went into effect.

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Seattle Public Schools Sees Alarming 20% Spike In Student Homelessness After 30% Rise Last Year

Seattle Public Schools is seeing an alarming rise in the number of its students experiencing homelessness. 

As of October, the district reported 2,235 students experiencing homelessness since the school year began, a nearly 20% increase from last year’s 30% rise, KUOW/NPR reported. 

Homelessness has reached record levels nationwide, according to a recent HUD report. In Washington state, over 41,000 students experienced homelessness during the 2023-24 school year, a nearly 15% increase.

Jenny Allen, a McKinney-Vento support worker in Seattle, said rising costs and limited affordable housing are straining families, while the district has seen a rise in immigrants and refugees, particularly from South America.

The KUOW/NPR report said that at Dunlap Elementary, Rogers Greene, an eight-year veteran supporting unhoused students, now assists a growing number of families fleeing conflicts in countries like Ukraine and Afghanistan.

“I can’t imagine. You’re just dropped somewhere and then figure it out — figure out the language, figure out how you’re going to live, where you’re going to live, how you’re going to eat. It’s survival. So it’s important for us to have those connections, relationships, and work through the language barrier,” he said. 

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Seattle Set Minimum Wage Over $20 and You’ll Totally Believe What Happened Next

Seattle closed the door on the subminimum wage for people who work for small businesses, earn tips, or enjoy medical benefits under a punishing new minimum wage law. This forced one popular spot to close up shop the same day the new ordinance went into effect.

“Previously, if an employee earned at least $2.72 per hour in medical benefits or tips,” Fox 13 Seattle reported, “a business could pay its workers $17.25 per hour.” As of New Year’s Day, all the exceptions and exemptions are gone. Seattle’s new no-excuses minimum wage is now a payroll-busting $20.76 an hour.

Bebop Waffle Shop threw a big party on Dec. 31 and permanently locked its doors on Jan. 1. My shocked face was last seen sipping a brandy by the fire and reading a dog-eared copy of Milton Friedman’s “Why Government Is the Problem.” That’s my amusingly wordy way of saying that I totally believe it happened.

The local diner’s finances were already suffering due to inflation and lower downtown foot traffic. It was against this economic backdrop that the city chose to impose a 20% pay hike on restaurant workers because politicians put moral preening and virtue signaling ahead of any other considerations.

Then there’s the part I didn’t believe at first but, on reflection, seemed almost inevitable. “I hate to close a safe space for queer people at this time,” Bebop Waffle Shop owner Corina Luckenbach explained on Instagram, “but the money just isn’t there after the minimum wage increase (which I fully support).”

Emphasis added because some folks are just too far gone ever to take the red pill. Still, you want to grab Corina by the hoodie and explain things to her in words she’ll understand, tell her, “Minimum wage laws are bad for queer people and other living things, mmkay?”

Anthony Anton, head of the Washington Hospitality Association, estimated that Seattle will see 5%-8% of its restaurants go out of business — in 2025 alone.

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Seattle Is Ordered to Stop Blocking Illegal Alien Deportations in the Most Hilarious Court Decision Ever

A federal court has just pooped in the oatmeal of the West Coast, Messed Coast™governors and local election officials suffering from acute cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome who think they can stop illegal alien deportations. And after this hilarious and thorough legal takedown from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, they may never recover. 

With California Governor Gavin Newsom calling a special legislative session to consider ways to fight Donald Trump and Washington’s Governor-elect Bob Ferguson calling for a special legislative committee to fight the Heritage Foundation’s white paper, Project 2025, you can see that Trump Derangement Syndrome among the far left—go ahead, say it, commies—running the West Coast, Messed Coast™ states are in full freak-out mode. 

Sadly, things have grown worse for these very fragile men.

A three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals court ruled that King County, Wash., can’t stop Trump’s deportation of the Democrats’ illegal alien voters. 

The conflict began in 2018 when King County (Seattle) czar Dow Constantine raised his emerald bejeweled scepter and declared that forthwith, the federal Immigration and Customs Service (ICE) shall no longer use Boeing Field, now officially called King County International Airport, to remove illegal voters  aliens. Forever and ever, amen. 

Constantine ordered his employees not to listen to ICE, but to take the lead of a leftist group based at the University of Washington that proclaimed it was wrong for the county to “provide the infrastructure through which private parties . . . profit from operating the deportation machine.”  The “private party” guys running the charters were out of luck when the county said to stop, or else.

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REVEALED: Woke Seattle school board chief who shut down gifted and talented sites because they had too many white and Asian students was accused of RACISM by colleagues during anti-racism training scheme

The woke Seattle school board chief who shuttered its gifted and talented programs because they had too many white and Asian students was previously accused of racism by a colleague, documents from the probe show. 

Along with another board member, in 2021 Chandra Hampson was found to have violated the policy against harassing, intimidating and bullying over their treatment of two black employees who were working on an anti-racism plan. 

The anonymous complainants accused Hampson of launching ‘an orchestrated campaign of bullying, escalating intimidation, gaslighting and retaliation’ against them, according to the investigation report. 

Although investigators did not find ‘clear evidence’ that Hampson and her board colleague Zachary DeWolf discriminated against the staffers because of their race, it did conclude that they ‘used their positions and authority to their detriment’.  

Three years later, Hampson is embroiled in a new race scandal at the school over the closure of its controversial gifted and talented programs. 

The district began phasing out its Highly Capable Cohort schools and classrooms for advanced students in the 2021-22 school year because they found it had too many racial inequities. 

School bosses said black and Hispanic students were underrepresented at the schools.

According to Seattle Public School data, of the highly capable students in the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent were white, 16 percent were Asian and 3.4 percent were black.

During a January 22, 2020, school board meeting, parents of black students in the Highly Capable Cohort asked the board to consider finding ways to incorporate students of color into the gifted program rather than shut it down.

Then school board vice president Chandra Hampson slammed those parents saying, ‘this is a pretty masterful job at tokenizing a really small community of color within the existing cohort.’

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Seattle finally starts throwing shoplifters and other petty criminals in jail for the first time in 4 years

Seattle has finally started tossing people in jail for low-level crimes again after four years of letting shoplifters, vandals and other petty criminals walk free.

The change, which went into effect earlier this month, reverses pandemic-era restrictions by King County that kept Seattle police from booking all but the most serious misdemeanors into the slammer.

Officials in the Emerald City argued the policy hamstrung prosecutors and cops.

But now Seattle’s ne’re-do-wells will face a jail cell if they flaunt the law.

The move is a win for local law enforcement, which has long pushed for more tools to fight a four-year crime wave that has continued since the pandemic — despite crime in nearly every other major city declining, an analysis by the Seattle Times showed.

“We’ve had people tell us, ‘You can’t arrest me for that.’ Well, that was true but now we can. We’re hoping to get a little bit of accountability back,” the Times quoted Deputy Police Chief Eric Barden as saying.

The booking restrictions began in 2020, when King County Jail — which contracts with Seattle — slashed its capacity for social distancing reasons.

After that, the county cited staffing issues for the ongoing restrictions.

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REPORT: Seattle Police Will No Longer Respond to Security Alarms Without ‘Supporting Evidence’

Police in the far left city of Seattle will apparently no longer respond to security alarms unless there is ‘supporting evidence’ which compels them to do so. What could possibly go wrong?

This is a reminder of what the left has done to the country. This sort of thing was never an issue before Democrats and the media began vilifying police and then starting the movement to ‘defund’ the police.

Criminals read the news too. They see reports like this one and know that they have every advantage.

FOX News reports:

‘Stranded and vulnerable’: Seattle police won’t respond to security alarms without ‘supporting evidence’

Police in Seattle will no longer be dispatched to burglary alarms based solely on sensors or motion activators beginning next week in a move that is catching many security system companies off guard.

“Our biggest fear is that crime is going to go up, and we do not want crime to go up,” Washington Alarm CEO Shannon Woodman told Fox News Digital Wednesday.

Beginning Oct. 1, the Seattle Police Department will only dispatch officers to alarm calls that come with “supporting evidence, such as audio, video, panic alarms or eyewitness evidence” that someone is breaking into a home or business, according to a letter interim police chief Sue Rahr sent to alarm companies.

“Of the 13,000 alarm calls in 2023, less than 4% were confirmed to have a crime associated with them that resulted in an arrest or reporting being written,” Rahr wrote in the letter dated Sept. 13…

“With depleted resources, we cannot prioritize a patrol response when there is a very low probability that criminal activity is taking place,” Rahr continued, an apparent nod to the department’s ongoing staffing shortages.

Is there any wonder why more Americans are buying guns these days?

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Activist Seattle judge releases 3 minors charged with bringing automatic weapons to parade

An activist judge has released three teens to home monitoring after they were arrested for bringing loaded guns, modified to be fully automatic, to a crowded Seattle parade. Parade-goers heard gunshots and began running.

Seattle Police arrested three armed male juveniles on July 21 at a parade in the Chinatown-International District after they were seen brandishing firearms near 7th Ave South and South Weller Street during the parade. A handgun was recovered from each of the teens and two of the guns were reported stolen.

Court records obtained by The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI revealed that the family of a murdered 16-year-old killed in Auburn last month was marching in the parade in honor of their son when they saw the three suspects, who they believe are connected to the murder, feared for their safety and alerted police.

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Far-left Seattle journalists appear to cheer on Trump assassination attempt

Two reporters for a far-left Seattle outlet are under fire after seeming to celebrate the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump.

Staff writer at The Stranger Ashley Nerbovig, who covers “policing, incarceration and courts” for the far-left outlet posted on X, “Make America aim again,” in reaction to the news that the former president had survived the shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday. Nervobig deleted the post, but screenshots went viral. She then deleted her account.

Fellow Stranger writer Hannah Krieg criticized Seattle’s Democratic mayor for praising the Secret Service and wishing the best for the former president.

Following the news of the failed assassination, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrel posted on X, “This act of political violence is disturbing and unacceptable in our country. Thank you to the Secret Service and all the first responders who quickly secured the scene. Our thoughts are with the former president and all the people who attended today’s rally.”

Krieg shared the post and wrote, “Mayor Bruce Harrel swiftly comes to the defense of Trump, a failed insurrectionist touted by mainstream Democrats as an existential threat to Democracy.” She deleted the post and then locked her account after the blowback.

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Seattle To Allow Illegals To Join Police Department

The Seattle Police Department will turn to illegals in an attempt to address its manpower woes, according to Law Enforcement Today.

The city will take advantage of Senate Bill 6157, signed into law by Democrat Governor Jay Inslee, to allow it to recruit illegals with DACA or “dreamer” status.

Since “dreamers” are in the country illegally, they are not allowed to carry a firearm. But Biden’s ATF ruled that DACA recipients could carry weapons and possess ammunition as part of law-enforcement roles.

In Los Angeles, Police Chief Michael Moore changed department policy so that DACA recipients who are members of the police department could carry their weapons off-duty, buy reclassifying off-duty hours as part of the “performance of their official duties.”

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