Extreme heat, reopening questions, the latest on variants and vaccines, tenant protection legislation passes, student mental health...

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Banner image showing King County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles.

July 1, 2021

girl with flag - Photo by vivek kumar on Unsplash

Photo by vivek kumar on Unsplash

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

What a week!  We just survived an unprecedented extreme heat event, but the bad news is we may be seeing more of them.  Our disruption of the earth’s climate systems is projected to make heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods and other climate impacts more frequent and intense.  According to the County Medical Examiner's Office, 11 King County residents died as a result of the heat. See below for more information. 

The good news is, however, that the County just passed transformational tenant protection legislation.  I sponsored the bill, along with my colleagues Councilmembers Girmay Zahilay and Dave Upthegrove.  I’ve included more details on the legislation below.

Also included below is the latest news on reopening and the COVID variants and vaccines.

Next week, the King County Council will have its regular, weekly meeting on Tuesday, July 6th, at 1 p.m.  Then, right after at 3 p.m., the Budget and Fiscal Management (BFM) Committee, which I chair, will meet briefings on the time table and process for awarding rental assistance funds and on the eighth COVID budget.  Agendas and meeting materials for those meetings are available here.  More details will be included in Monday’s e-newsletter, which we will be sending out, despite the holiday. 

I wish you and your family a happy and safe 4th of July holiday!  Fortunately, we are able to celebrate (with caution) the reopening of the economy and the diminishing number of new positive cases and deaths.

As always, I would like to hear from you. You can call me at 206-477-1004 or you can reach me by email at jeanne.kohl-welles@kingcounty.gov.   

All the best and I hope you are staying safe.