By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
In January 2025, the Seattle City Council appointed Mark A. Solomon to fill the vacant District 2 seat left by former Councilmember Tammy Morales. After five rounds of voting, Solomon secured the majority needed to represent the district, which includes Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, the Chinatown-International District, Columbia City, Mount Baker, Yesler Terrace, and Rainier Beach.
Now halfway through his tenure, Solomon said he feels deeply honored to serve his community.
“I want to express my deep gratitude to this Council for their trust,” he said. “I’m really all about serving this community, getting things done, and working with the Council to make life better for the City of Seattle and the residents of District 2.”
Born and raised in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, Solomon graduated from Seattle University before serving seven years as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Air Force. After leaving active duty, he returned to Seattle to become a Crime Prevention Coordinator at the Seattle Police Department while also serving as a reservist at Joint Base Lewis–McChord.
Since taking office, Solomon has focused on tackling some of Seattle’s most pressing issues, including vacant storefronts, housing insecurity, and public safety.
“I’d say I’m halfway through my stint, got started in January. We’re now just at the end of June. I will be in this seat until probably November 25th and hope to do a warm handoff to whoever comes behind me,” he said.
“But in the meantime, I am not just sitting around, not doing anything. We’ve worked on getting some changes regarding street-level occupancy so we can activate some of our vacant storefronts. We’ve done permitting extensions so that projects already in the hopper can continue and hopefully get those projects online sooner rather than later.”
Housing remains one of Solomon’s top priorities. He recently organized an anti-displacement resource fair, bringing together housing providers, nonprofits, and government agencies to help residents stay in their homes.
“I think one of the biggest things that I’ve been able to accomplish since I’ve gotten here was a couple of weeks back, I did an anti-displacement resource fair,” Solomon said. “Bringing together different organizations from community-based, county, city, United Way, Habitat for Humanity, all kinds of organizations that have programs already in place to help people stay in their homes.”
He added that preventing displacement is also about building long-term economic security.
“I want to make sure that we have the opportunity to build generational wealth in our community, and bringing all those resources together and letting people know that they exist was a major step in that,” he said.
Solomon said community members have already called for another fair in the future.
“We’ve heard calls from people saying this was great, let’s do it again,” he said. “So I’m not sure if I’ll have an opportunity to do another resource fair or if I’m going to basically hand the manual over to whoever follows me and say, ‘Hey, this is what we did, make sure something like this happens again.’”
In addition to housing, Solomon has worked on legislation related to accessory dwelling units, Sound Transit policies, street kiosks, and after-hours club regulations.
Looking ahead, he said federal policy shifts under President Trump’s administration present serious challenges for Seattle, particularly potential funding cuts that could affect local services.
“We’re definitely looking at what is happening in the other Washington and how it’s going to impact us here,” Solomon said.
“There was a special select committee that was proposed by Councilmember Rinck that we’re taking these things on. We’re looking at how federal policies are impacting us on a local level and what we can do to insulate ourselves from that.”
Solomon said the Council is preparing for cuts to food assistance, transportation funding, and legal representation for unaccompanied minors.
“So, we see these assaults on food security, so what can we do here to make sure that food assistance isn’t cut? What can we do here to help those unaccompanied minors that need representation in immigration courts?” said Solomon.
“What are we going to do about transportation funding cuts?” he continued. “There’s a lot of cuts that we’re looking at that are coming in our direction, and a lot of threats. And again, we’re trying to figure out what we can do to insulate ourselves from that. Because while the federal money may be going away, the need has not gone away.”
As his interim term continues, Solomon said he plans to keep advancing initiatives that help residents and strengthen communities.
