The Lanyard Board #1 - Seattle City Council Committee Changes, Characterized
Alliteration is an unfortunate side effect.
January 6th, 2026 saw Seattle City Council adopting a set of resolutions that overhauled the 2024-2025 City Council Standing Committees, changing their topics, the departments those standing committees oversee and the chairpersons, vice chairpersons and members of these committees.
In addition to that, a new City Council President was chosen - President Joy Hollingsworth (D3). These details and more can be found referenced in the City Council Blog Post about the matter, and my initial Quick Update article released last week.
In this edition of The Lanyard Board, I will be discussing the changes in the composition of these standing committees more thoroughly, zooming in on the changes to the committees based on which district/position representative is chairing the committee.
Style note - some of this is going to be dense. This is to retain accuracy in the language I’m using to describe the changes. For plain language commentary, Follow TLB on Social Media, because it tends to be a better forum for using ‘messy’ language such as “X committee belongs to Y Councilmember/District” (Inaccurate but legible) as opposed to “X committee is overseen by the committee chaired by the Councilmember representing Y position/district". For this analysis, accuracy is important, so the stylistic choice is made to retain accurate (but cumbersome) language. Where brevity is needed, the shorthand to refer to these standing committees is “Position X’s committee”.
Methodology
All data are sourced from official and public City of Seattle repositories. The primary sources consulted for information about committees are the legislation that most recently established the committees for the 2024-2025 period, and legislation from January 6th, 2026 which establish committees for the 2026-2027 period.
In addition to this, budget data from the Opengov repository on the City of Seattle Operating Budget has been consulted to understand relative budget oversight. For the sake of today’s analysis, however, the budgetary data is omitted, favoring a qualitative approach to understanding these changes. More will be released in the mid-week Quick Update on why that decision was made and when to expect a quantitative analysis of this subject.
The way chairpersons are depicted reflect the Council right before the changes on January 6th, 2026. This means Councilmembers that transitioned out sometime in the 2024-2026 cycle aren’t represented. Further analysis could be improved by chunking up and analyzing composition of the committees at various time points in City Council (e.g. whenever there is a Councilmember transition).
Department Oversight Changes
Around half of all departments have experienced a change in the council position that now chairs their oversight committee (n=21 changed, compared to n=22 for unchanged). This is lower than the number of departments which have experienced a change in the vice chair for their respective committee (n=25 have a different vice chair, n=18 for unchanged).
Refer to the table below (Table 1) to see whether a given department or office has undergone a change in their oversight committee chair or vice chair:
If the chair has changed, this means that there is a new district/position representative that is chairing the committee that oversees a given office or department. If the vice chair has changed, this means that there is a new district/position representative that is serving as vice chair for the committee that oversees a given office or department.
The following figure (Fig. 1) depicts the changes made to each committee by which district/position chairs it.
Next, I’ll go through each district/position and focus on the changes that have been made for each of these standing committees. For all committees, there will be changes based on the following two events that occurred simultaneously to the establishment of these new committees:
Joy Hollingsworth was chosen as President of the City Council
Position 9 transitioned from Sara Nelson to Dionne Foster
Council Position 1 Standing Committee Changes
The composition of the committee chaired by District 1’s representative changed considerably on January 6, 2026. Instead of just overseeing the Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Center and Office of the Waterfront are now under the oversight of the newly named “Transportation, Waterfront, and Seattle Center Committee”.
Councilmember Saka is still the chairperson overseeing all things “Transportation”, and the Office of the Waterfront is actually housed within the Department of Transportation, so this change seems to align with department-level structural realities. Councilmember Kettle remains a member of this committee.
The following are the personnel changes to this standing committee:
Vice Chair Hollingsworth => Vice Chair Rinck
Councilmember Rinck => Councilmember Foster
Councilmember Strauss => Councilmember Lin
Council Position 2 Standing Committee Changes
The composition of the committee chaired by District 2’s representative changed moderately on January 6, 2026. In addition to the Land Use Committee’s overseen “Office of Planning and Community Development” and “Department of Construction and Inspections”, this committee now oversees the Office of Sustainability and Environment, changing names to the “Land Use and Sustainability Committee”.
Councilmember Lin remains the chairperson for Land Use and its related subjects, and Councilmember Strauss remains the vice chair. Councilmember Rinck remains a member of this committee.
The following are the personnel changes to this standing committee:
Councilmember Juarez => President Hollingsworth
Councilmember Rivera => Councilmember Foster
Council Position 3 Standing Committee Changes
The composition of the committee chaired by District 3’s representative changed considerably on January 6, 2026. The only departments that remain chaired by Position 3 from last cycle’s configuration are Seattle Information Technology and Seattle Public Utilities.
Office of City Auditor, Hearing Examiner, Legislative Department, Mayor’s Office, Office of Intergovernmental Relations and Ethics & Elections have been added. This is due to the chairperson of this committee being President Hollingsworth, newly chosen as the City Council President and absorbing all of the “Governance” related Offices and Departments into their portfolio.
Almost unexpectedly, all normal members of this committee remain the same as before. The only transition is as follows:
Vice Chair Nelson => Vice Chair Juarez
Council Position 4 Standing Committee Changes
The composition of the committee chaired by District 4’s representative changed slightly on January 6, 2026. This committee has no new offices or departments it oversees, nor have any been transitioned to another oversight committee. The name of the committee remains the same.
The major change is that President Hollingsworth is now the vice chair of this committee. Councilmember Lin remains a member. The personnel changes are as follows:
Vice Chair Rinck <=> Vice Chair Hollingsworth
Councilmember Juarez => Councilmember Foster
Council Position 5 Standing Committee Changes
The composition of the committee chaired by District 5’s representative changed almost completely on January 6, 2026. This committee no longer focuses on Housing and Human Services, but instead Parks and City Light - losing the oversight of Human Services Department, Office for Civil Rights, Office of Housing and SDCI’s Landlord-Tenant relations, and gaining the oversight of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation and Seattle City Light.
In addition to this, most of the members on this committee have transitioned out, with a new Vice Chair and two new other members. The changes are as follows:
Vice Chair Lin => Vice Chair Kettle
President Nelson => Councilmember Rivera
Councilmember Rinck => Councilmember Strauss
Council Position 6 Standing Committee Changes
The composition of the committee chaired by District 6’s representative changed slightly on January 6, 2026. No changes were made to the overseen offices/departments, and membership only changed by a single transition, which is as follows:
President Nelson => President Hollingsworth
Council Position 7 Standing Committee Changes
The composition of the committee chaired by District 7’s representative changed slightly on January 6, 2026. No changes were made to the overseen offices/departments, and membership only changed by two transitions, which are as follows:
President Hollingsworth => Councilmember Lin
President Nelson => Councilmember Rivera
Council Position 8 Standing Committee Changes
The composition of the committee chaired by Position 8’s representative changed almost completely on January 6, 2026. Rather than being focused on Sustainability, City Light, Arts & Culture, this new committee has absorbed oversight of many of the Governance, Accountability and Economic Development departments.
This committee no longer oversees Office of Arts and Culture, Office of Sustainability and Environment, and Seattle City Light, and now instead oversees the Civil Service Commission, Human Services Department, Office of Economic Development, Office of Employee Ombud, Office of Labor Standards and Seattle Department of Human Resources.
In addition to these changes, there are new councilmembers and a new vice chair serving on this committee. The full changes are as follows:
Vice Chair Juarez => Vice Chair Foster
Councilmember Lin => Councilmember Juarez
Councilmember Strauss => President Hollingsworth
Council Position 9 Standing Committee Changes
The composition of the committee chaired by Position 9’s representative changed completely on January 6, 2026. Rather than being the committee chaired by the current council president, as was in the case under President Nelson, this committee is chaired by newcomer Councilmember Foster, joined by Vice Chair Councilmember Lin.
Instead of overseeing the departments formerly overseen by the Governance, Accountability & Economic Development committee, this committee oversees the Office of Arts and Culture, Office for Civil Rights, Office of Housing and the Landlord-Tenant Regulations of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.
In terms of membership, there have been many transitions, which are as follows:
Chairperson Nelson => Chairperson Foster
Vice Chair Kettle => Vice Chair Lin
Councilmember Rivera => Councilmember Juarez
Councilmember Lin => Councilmember Rinck
Summary
There have been some minor changes made to all of the standing committees of the Seattle City Council, with a few committees being completely overhauled.
Housing and Human Services split its dual-focus, transitioning the housing and civil rights functions to Position 9’s committee and the human service functions to Position 8’s committee.
Governance functions of the Governance, Accountability and Economic Development committee were incorporated into Position 3’s committee, while the economic development and personnel functions were transitioned into Position 8’s committee.
The Sustainability, City Light, and Culture Committee split its three functions into three separate committees - sustainability added to Position 2’s committee, City Light added to Position 5’s committee and Arts & Culture under Position 8’s committee.
Finally, Parks and Utilities retained its utility functions, but transitioned its parks and recreation functions to Position 5’s committee and its Seattle Center functions to Position 1’s committee.
Further analysis of compositional arrangement of factors like budgetary allocation, staffing, department structure and functional analysis could reveal further patterns behind these changes.
More to Come
Next week we will take a look at the composition of the Seattle Municipal Code over a period of time and begin to unpack how the code changes based on the legislature that oversees it. I will also be introducing a new “resources” segment to the newsletter and website, so all infographics, datasets and analyses produced will be available at the click of a button.
Throughout the week, I’ll be posting some more snippets about the council changes, including further diagrams and conversation around budgetary allocation. The best way to keep up with these conversations is to be a subscriber to The Lanyard Board, and to check out The Lanyard Board on social media.
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