By Carolyn Bick
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Satwinder Kaur
Kent City Council Position 2 candidates Satwinder Kaur and Neet Grewal went head-to-head in a moderated town hall forum held at Kent Lutheran Church on Oct. 1.
Kaur, the seat’s incumbent, and Grewal answered questions from moderators about a variety of topics—though the moderators had to step in, at one point, when Grewal cut into Kaur’s time to fire back a response at her opponent.
Kaur, a lifelong Kent resident who has raised her family in the city, has held the seat since 2017, and made history as the first Indian American Sikh woman elected to the city council. Kaur’s campaign site states that her work on the council includes making improvements to local parks, increasing safety in public spaces, and helping to secure more than $70 million in citywide infrastructure funding.
Her site says that she also supported Kent’s Community Immersion Law Enforcement Program, which allows police officers to deepen their understanding of Kent’s diverse communities, and advocated for increased police staffing and community policing resources.
During her time on the council, including her time as the council’s president for its 2024 budget cycle, Kaur helped the city win the Excellence in Financial Reporting and Distinguished Budget Presentation from the Government Finance Officers Association.
Kaur is also a member of Sikh SOCH and volunteers at the KentHOPE women’s shelter.
Kaur is endorsed by a suite of legislators, including Renton City Councilmember Kim Khanh-Van, Rep. Adam Smith, and former King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove (who now serves as Public Lands Commissioner). A host of organizations and unions, including the UFCW 3000 Union, the National Women’s Political Caucus of Washington, and the Kent Education Association, also endorse her.
Neet Grewal
Grewal’s campaign website states that she is a “fierce advocate for family values,” and is “running … with a vision to restore common sense and accountability in local government.”
Also according to her campaign site, the Kent Police Department has experienced a particularly high attrition rate, and Kent City Hall has “turned its back on law enforcement.”
Over the last several years, Kent has attempted to hire more police officers through a combination of actions endorsed at the city council level. Currently, the Kent Police Department is fully staffed at 167 officers. For two years in a row, the city has attempted to hire more officers that the department says it needs, but the measure failed in the legislature.
Grewal also states on her site that the city council has “thrown millions of taxpayer dollars” at homelessness, and that nothing they are doing is working. She proposed “tough love and real pathways to getting clean,” but doesn’t list any of what those pathways look like, outside “public-private partnerships.”
Grewal also states that Kaur and the Kent City Council have “strangled Kent’s economy with red tape.” Grewal states that she wants to get rid of this red tape, and implement a Strategic Crypto Reserve that she claims will not only secure the financial future of the city, but also “end the sales tax loophole draining city coffers.” This refers to the streamlined sales tax that the legislature in 2007 imposed on Kent and other cities, which ultimately drew a significant amount of revenue away from the city.
As with its support for the Kent Police Department, the Kent City Council has repeatedly attempted to get more mitigation funds to offset the impact of the streamlined sales tax.
Grewal’s site does not list any endorsements, but her Instagram account has a few reels with individual self-identified liberals who support her.
Graffiti
In response to a question regarding graffiti around the city, Kaur said that the city council passed a law in 2022 to make it illegal to sell aerosol sprays to people under the age of 19, and that it added $250,000 to the budget specifically to handle graffiti clean-up and prevention.
“We contract with our different small businesses to help with graffiti, and we also host cleanup days for graffiti, where we have our electeds, our police officers, and our community members get involved to help remove graffiti from our community,” Kaur said. She also said that the 30-plus artistic utility boxes around the neighborhood was another city move to deter graffiti.
“We have … diverse artists from our community participating in that,” Kaur said, adding for audience members that they should feel free to call in graffiti they find, “because we do get involved and go remove that graffiti. I think that’s the missing piece, where the residents don’t know that they can call in and the city does help.”
Grewal opened with a joke about how she uses her first name, Neet, to refer to herself: “I always say, ‘My name is like ‘neat and tidy,’ and I’m here to clean up Kent.’”
She said that the root of the problem is gang tagging. While it is immediately unclear whether this is true, one high-profile tagger in Kent appears to have been connected to a gang. Moreover, most people confuse graffiti with gang tagging, even though most graffiti across the United States is not gang-related.
Grewal also pointed out that Kaur’s invitation to the audience doesn’t extend to places with Homeowners’ Associations (HOAs), because it’s private property. She again linked graffiti with gang activity, and said that the city should have better youth and gang diversion programs.
Low-income housing
Grewal said that she would tackle the low-income housing shortage through private-public partnerships.
“I worked in a lot of different cities that have similar demographics to Kent, and I know what works and what doesn’t. Currently, every single year, we have a $600 million budget, and every single year, we’re throwing more money towards housing, and yet the problem is getting exacerbated,” Grewal said. “It doesn’t really add up to keep throwing money at failing programs. What I think we need to do is instead reallocate the budget and try new things. Let’s have a change, and let’s try new things that are gonna work. I think the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I think Albert Einstein said that, and I agree with him. So I think our city could take some notes from that.”
She also said that taxpayer-subsidized, low-income housing isn’t working, and used the low-income apartment complex, Thea Bowman Apartments, as an example. Grewal appeared to equate alleged drug use there and what she described as a lack of oversight and regulation with the building being taxpayer-subsidized.
“Thirty percent of the [housing] allocation went to veterans, 70% was to low-income housing and things like that,” Grewal said. “But without regulation, such as drug testing and things like that, the building has gone rampant and become a hotspot for crime. It’s become a hotspot for drug use. And in fact … some of [the veterans] are using fentanyl as well. So it kind of backfired. … Without regulations and a true way to regulate everything and keep things in line and uphold the rule of law, then we’re not going to get very far.”
In opening her answer, Kaur noted that the $600 million Grewal quoted was incorrect.
“The City of Kent’s budget is $440 million, not $600 [million], and a lot of it is tied up in funds, like the criminal justice fund, or we have debt to pay and we have public works utilities. … There’s special funds that we cannot touch,” Kaur explained.
Kaur said that where the city council could make a difference is the city’s general fund, and that she would keep focusing her efforts there and on regional partnerships, if re-elected.
Currently, she said, 50% of the general fund goes to funding the police. She also said that the city partners with the South King House and Homelessness Partners (SKHHP), because “alone we cannot solve this problem.”
“We have to come together regionally with our neighboring cities to solve this, and from that project, we’ve been able to fund five different projects in South King County,” Kaur said, before listing the different projects. These projects include the Kent Multicultural Village.
“Those kinds of partnerships work effectively, because we put our resources together because of the amount of limited resources we individually have,” Kaur said. “I would definitely encourage continuing working on those types of partnerships so we can build more projects around South County, not just in Kent, around the region, so we can have more housing units available for our individual families who are facing homelessness.”
Vacant properties
Like Position 6 candidate Sharn Shoker, Kaur noted that the city is losing two Fred Meyer stores. She said that the city would need to work with property owners, including keeping up with code enforcement to ensure that those buildings do not become increasingly dangerous and unusable.
There are some private property rights that the city has to abide by, she said, but that they will specifically continue to have those talks and work with those property owners to have the best chance of putting those empty buildings to good use.
“Talking about Fred Meyer, specifically, we are working with them to ensure they will have it fenced properly,” Kaur said. “We are working with them to encourage them to sell that as soon as possible so we can use it for … multi-family units [or] some innovative, other business ideas.”
Grewal said that the city needs to build a culture that invites businesses to the neighborhood, and listed several other businesses that have recently shuttered their doors for different reasons that do not appear to have to do with whether the city is business-friendly. She highlighted the closure of Bartell Drugs (its parent company Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy) and Walgreens (like Fred Meyer, the company decided to close less-profitable stores).
“Our seniors and our elderly or people that have disabilities or need their medication are really affected by this … so, yeah, sure, we can tear down the Fred Meyer or tear down the Rite Aid or tear down the Walgreens and build multifamily housing. But what about the needs and the places that this was for our community? How are we going to replace that?” she questioned. “Ultimately, that’s replaced by businesses. And when businesses don’t want to come to Kent, and in fact, they want to leave Kent, as you know, we can’t solve a problem if we don’t even admit it exists.”
Political leanings
Grewal characterized herself as “an outsider and an independent. I have been [with] both parties. Sometimes I disagree with and sometimes both parties I agree with.”
“And also I’ve taken pictures with national figures that are right wing, that are left wing, but as tends to happen, [the public] only like to circulate the right wing ones, because that’s kind of a touchy topic around here, but that’s okay,” Grewal said. “So I have a lot of pictures with national figures that are from the Democrat side. And I have a lot of pictures with national figures that are from the conservative side.”
She said that she likes to listen and learn from national figures on both sides so she can bring that knowledge to the community, and that party politics are used to control and divide people, and that she likes to “focus on human consciousness and what brings us together as people.”
She then stated that “I don’t care about outside things that are outside of Kent.”
“I think that there’s a huge stigma around me being a certain way—really, I don’t care. I have best friends that are very, very liberal and best friends that are very, very conservative,” Grewal said. “And that’s because I connect with people on a soul level, on a cellular level, on a consciousness level and a spiritual level.”
Kaur said that she was “a very practical person,” whose decision-making while on the council has been focused on community issues. This is why, she said, she has endorsements of both Democratic and Republican colleagues and other electeds.
Kaur also pointed out that Grewal’s statement regarding not caring about “things that are outside of Kent” did not appear to be true.
“My opponent here actually was the person who created that big fuss about Charlie Kirk a couple of weeks ago at KSD (Kent School District),” she said.
Kaur was referring to Grewal shouting over another public commenter at a KSD meeting in September, regarding the district’s decision not to lower the flag to half-staff, after Second Amendment personality Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at a conservative youth in Utah on Sept. 10. Grewal had already used up her own public comment period, and said that the district should lower the flag to half-staff. She said that this violated “orders from our Republican president and Democratic governor.”
While schools are subject to certain federal and state restrictions, the federal government nor the state government can control or regulate schools and school districts in their decisions regarding lowering flags to half-staff.
As in the KSD meeting, Grewal jumped in to comment over Kaur: “That was the Kent School District, which does pertain to Kent.”
“No, no, no,” the moderator said, attempting to cut off Grewal, because it was not her turn to speak. “You got your one minute.”
“Okay,” Grewal responded.
Homelessness
“Just to reiterate the rules, no speaking out of turn and respecting your opponents, okay?” the moderator said, while moving onto how the candidates would ramp up and provide better services to people experiencing homelessness, if elected.
Kaur said that the city is currently in the midst of looking at “all types of housing,” following the passage of its comprehensive plan, and that it recently approved accessory dwelling units in 2023.
“We’re looking at diversity of housing, increasing density … we have to build over … 10,000 units in Kent for our growth,” Kaur said. “We’re planning it strategically on where we want our growth to be, because we wanna make sure … we have transportation available for them, that we have resources available for [the new housing units].”
She noted again the city’s work with SKHHP and that the new units represent transit-oriented development, since they are located near public transportation.
While she said that she would support anything the community wants, Grewal said that “the last time we tried to pass tiny homes,” members of the community opposed it, and Kaur supported it.
“All eight members, everyone besides Satwinder [Kaur] … she actually came up and said, ‘No, I think that the vote needs to continue,’ and she voted for tiny homes, even though the people and the rest of the council together said they did not,” Grewal said. “And if that is up for contest, I can actually provide documentation from the Kent Reporter and the meeting minutes if anyone’s interested in seeing that.”
At a council workshop, at which no votes were taken, Kaur and two other Kent City council members, of the seven total, supported hearing a proposal from the Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI) to explain their services and work. LIHI operates tiny home villages throughout the City of Seattle.
Kaur later joined her fellow council members in voting to halt any tiny home proposals. She said that the council needed to look at the whole process and address homelessness in a long-term plan.
Leave a Reply