Seattle City Council and Mayor Greg Nickels never have gotten along particularly well. It appears that Mayor-elect Mike McGinn will try to get off to a better start, using a bit of informality.
In an electronic newsletter, City Councilmember Nick Licata said McGinn dropped by the council offices on Friday for unannounced chats with the officials. That's a lot more friendly than what the c
ouncil has become used to, but it will take time to know the results. There was a lot of talk during the Nickels administration, especially from knowledgeable veteran Councilmember Jan Drago, that the main factor in difficulties with a mayor seemed to be when the council opened itself to being pushed around by the executive. As a recent
Stranger article suggested , moreover, the council may hold more levers of power than McGinn until he has been in office for a time.
But McGinn is making an attempt to go directly to the council without the usual formality. Here's part of how Licata told the story of McGinn's drop-in visit:
"Friday afternoon Councilmember Jan Drago stuck her head into my office and said in a jovial manner, 'Hey if you want to see the new Mayor, come next door.' That would be Councilmember Sally Clark's office. Drago and I found Mayor-Elect Mike McGinn in the middle of Clark's office, smiling broadly (his seemingly ever present smile may become his trademark) and talking in a casual style to both staff and Clark. Councilmember Tim Burgess soon walked over and joined us.
"McGinn explained that rather than making courtesy calls to all the Councilmembers, he thought it better to just walk over and meet face to face on a casual basis. This is a departure from Mayor Nickel's style, which was to rely more on his deputy mayor Tim Ceis to walk the Council hallway.
"In another way McGinn is making a more dramatic departure from not only the Nickels' transition but others that have gone before him as well. Rather than appoint a distinguished list of civic leaders and activists to head up his transition team, he is relying on a more diffuse collection of community people. As one of them explained to me, 'He wanted to avoid a sense of who was in and who was out in this effort.' And there still seems to be a lot of campaign volunteers willing to continue with their assistance. McGinn shared with us that up to six volunteers a day were currently working in the transition office in the Municipal Tower across from City Hall."
The rest of Licata's message doesn't appear to be posted yet on his council Web site but it probably will be soon. You can subscribe to the e-mail version of the newsletter here .
