 June is Pride Month!
Each year, we celebrate Pride Month in June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City, where the LGBTQ+ community protested persecution and discrimination at the hands of law enforcement and catalyzed the gay rights movement in the United States. Pride Month is especially poignant this year in the face of increasing attacks on the rights of the LGBTQ+ community around the country.
Join the celebration at these Eastside events:
First ever Paws and Pride Dog Jog and Walk
 Sunday, June 4 at Ashwood Park in Bellevue. Organized by Eastside Pride NW and the Bellevue Downtown Association, the event will benefit Seattle Humane of Bellevue and Lambert House, a community center for LGBTQ+ youth.
Rainbow on the Eastside Pride Month Art Show
 Thursday, June 8 at Centro Cultural Mexicano in Redmond. This beloved event celebrates the LGBTQIA+ Eastside community through art and storytelling and there will be live music, food, and special giveaways.
For ongoing resources, support, and safe space events, check out Pride Across the Bridge. With events like an LGBTQ+ Dungeons and Dragons game night and breakfasts for LGBTQ+ elders and resources like educational materials and provider referrals, this organization is a great place to connect and get support.
On Tuesday, after serving two years as President of the four-county Puget Sound Regional Council, I passed the mantle of leadership to Poulsbo Mayor Erickson as PSRC’s new president and Snohomish County Executive Somers as vice president. It's been an honor to serve as President of PSRC, a little-known, but important venue where leaders from across our region come to plan and set economic development, growth management and transportation policy. On transportation alone, it distributes well over $300 million per year in Federal transportation funding for projects that will set the region’s course in achieving our climate, equity, and safety goals.
I used these past two years to push PSRC for more transparency and better climate, safety, and equity outcomes. Key achievements included:
- We adopted our very first PSRC Regional Housing Strategy, including regional and local approaches around housing supply, stability, and subsidy to make housing more affordable and accessible for everybody
- PSRC convened its first ever Equity Advisory Committee (EAC) made up of stakeholders from around the region who will be deeply engaged on housing and transportation issues, as well as other regional issues
- On climate, elected leaders changed the region’s transportation plan to better track our climate goals and to make it more accountable to our region’s adopted climate goals
- On safety, our region is seeing an alarming amount of traffic injuries and deaths. With the goal of reducing serious injuries and deaths, we secured $4.9 million in federal funding to develop our first-ever Regional Safety Plan.
As we continue this work, now more than ever we must never accept the statement that there's nothing we can do to solve our big regional problems. PSRC offers a unique venue to meet and solve these problems, and I can’t wait to see what progress the region can make working together.
Second Stormwater Summit a success
On Wednesday, I joined Executive Constantine, Region 10 EPA Administrator Casey Sixkiller, tribal, local, state, and federal government leaders, and hundreds of advocates, experts, and stakeholders at our second Regional Stormwater Summit.
Stormwater pollution threatens human and aquatic health, as well as endangering our ability to honor the rights and culture of our region’s tribes. 118 million gallons of contaminated stormwater enter our water without treatment each year, bearing pollutants from motor oil, yard chemicals, and pet waste. Alarmingly, we’ve also learned that toxic dust from vehicle tires is a particularly deadly threat to Coho salmon and other fish.
As Chair of the Regional Water Quality Committee, I shared the important opportunity we have right now to make sure that we are building clean water into all our municipal policies, programs, and projects, including the major comprehensive plan updates currently underway.
Based on collaborative research, the summit coalesced around four goal areas:
- Create regional stormwater parks
- Treat polluted runoff from roadways
- Restore natural flows
- Control upstream sources of toxic pollutants
It was a wonderful learning opportunity and I’m looking forward to turning this learning into action.
Spread the word!
Please forward this email widely and invite others to sign-up to my email updates to receive important and timely information for District 6 constituents.
Sincerely,
 Claudia Balducci
King County Council
District 6
|
