Seattlest just got done attending the press conference for the re-opening of the Downtown Bus Tunnel. After two years of work, it's set to reopen next Monday. That's exactly two years (as King County Exec. Ron Sims was fond of repeating over and over today) after it closed. We have to say, we're pretty impressed with what they've done. Needless to say, it's a pretty big achievement in a region not exactly known for making......

They're actually doing it. The Port is getting King County Airport (AKA Boeing Field) in exchange for an Eastside rail corridor and a bag of baseballs. A bunch of Agreements were signed today making it so, with the other interested party being King County. When this deal was first floated to the public in October it was made clear that the rail corridor would be transformed into a recreational trail, something that we found to......

In the old days, when men were men and trees fit in the ground, newspapers were no less biased than the average KVI caller. Most were organs of one political party or the other, and as a result were very entertaining. Then some wisenheimer got the idea that newspapers should be unbiased, and as a result you get the awful flabby boring unreadable product that is the modern American daily newspaper, with headlines like......

We're glad we stuck around for the audience Q&A after the panel discussion on gentrification Thursday night, hosted by the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs. That way we got to hear from the intense woman who discoursed on a variety of topics, including the abomination of Wal-Mart, things being done in Boston, and the lack of education about some guy whose name we can't remember; and from the gentleman who wondered aloud......

Yesterday while most of the city was all a-twitter about President Hu’s visit to the city (today he will get a tour of the Fun Forest, and attend a live taping of Northwest Afternoon), Ron Sims proposed a plan to pay for more buses by raising the county sales tax one tenth of one percent. The buses would be used to increase the amount of rides on the Eastside, along the Pacific Highway South, and......

This Thursday the UW will host a panel discussion about change in Seattle's Central District, pitting gentrification against "revitalization"--the latter, we hope, being something said panel will subject to more rigorous definition. We are pleased to see this topic discussed in a public forum, but these days we wonder who listens to panels any more, much less an academic-sponsored one (as opposed to those ever-popular corporate-sponsored panels--everyone listens to them). What happens after the panel?......

Well, it happened. In a 7-2 vote that was never extended to the public, the King County Council agreed to spending at least $500,000 to change our logo from a crown to the likeness of Martin Luther King Jr. And to add to the surreal ludicrousness of this move, Ron Sims is designing the new logo. The jesters are now running the castle, Seattle. The people of Seattle didn't approve of the idea when it......

On Friday the City Council capped off a busy week by appointing Sally Clark as Jim Compton's replacement. Clark had been working at Lifelong AIDS Alliance when she, along with 102 others, applied for the position. There had been speculation that the council was looking to replace Compton with a minority candidate, making Clark, the only white finalist, something of a long shot. After early rounds of voting failed to produce a majority, Clark won......

Until we had to actually consider it we had absolutely no opinion of the waterfront trolley. We just watched it going by day after day from the loading dock behind our office. Generally empty. Everytime it clang-clanged its way through the intersection across the street we'd glance up and mutter curses at whichever driver thought they could beat it through. Just once did we see it hit someone. It was a minivan and we only......

At Seattlest, we read the candidate endorsements so you don't have to flip that far into your paper. In our thorough research, certain themes emerged. At the P-I, they wrote endorsements as if they were late for a meeting. For Seattle City Council--return all the incumbents, they say. Statewide Initiatives? Say no to everything! Port Commission? It's time for change! The Stranger used the dorky gimmick of asserting that they were drunk as they wrote......

We're currently toning our TV watching muscles for the fall and we're extra excited about the new Seattle-based legal drama set to premiere as a part of Q13's Sunday lineup. King County Cold Case (or "K3C" as we'll immediately start calling it) is the story of a local crime lab headed by a hard-nosed prosecuting attorney played by Tom Skerritt. Hillary Swank will costar as a lawyer recruited by the department from the most-dangerous-offender project.......

There's approximately 550,000 people in Seattle, and about 45,000 of them voted yesterday. What did this select few decide? --They gave the Monorail board a few new members. --They chose Ron Sims to be the Democratic candidate for King County Commissioner. --They picked a candidate to run against Greg Nickels in November's general election: Al Runte, a former UW professor. On his web site, the neophyte pol says he is "running for Mayor of Seattle......

King County will be holding its primary election next Tuesday; however, in two races the primary will also act as the general election. Because Democrats live in the city and Republicans live on the Eastside, the two races that feature only candidates from a particular party will be decided next week (or in the courts sometime next June). The King County Council is being shrunk from thirteen seats to nine, meaning that four sitting council......

Last night at the King County Democrats nominating convention in Bellevue delegates chose King County Council member Bob Ferguson to represent the party in the county's first district. He beat fellow Council member Carolyn Edmonds by a vote of 381 to 288. Of course, the whole vote could be meaningless if a judge rules against the voter approved "top two" primary, in which the two candidates with the most votes, no matter what party, advance......

Political party infighting is nothing new, and as a result of the King County Council shrinking from thirteen seats to nine it is back in a big way. Currently the way Washingtonians will vote in the primary election is in the courts. Last fall voters approved an amendment which stated that the top two vote getters in the primary would face each other in the general election. The state political parties have challenged this......

Downsized King County Councilman Dwight Pelz, who originally planned to run for Richard Conlin's Seattle City Council seat, flip-flopped last week, and will instead run against Richard McIver. Ironically, when Pelz committed to run against Conlin, in January, he said this: "[Conlin] is very committed to process. I make decisions very quickly. I think the City Council needs more decisiveness." Ya don't say. Pelz faces the spectre of unemployment when the King County Council......

Metropolitan King County Council interjected on the issue of the region's various Tent Cities yesterday, setting guidelines for the temporary permits the homeless communities will require. While it's nice to finally see the council acknowledge Tent Cities, the ordinance comes across as unnecessarily restrictive to Seattlest's eye, although others believe it is not strong enough. County-owned land will be off limits to Tent Cities for at least the next 12 months while the Council studies......

It looks like a city council race will have issues other then off leash areas and transportation woes. The fate of the trolley has become part of the campaign for those seeking City Council Position 2. Sure, it is not as exciting as strip-club owners giving money to council members, as titillating as who mismanaged city departments, or as delightfully confusing as anything that Charlie Chong said, but the trolley is shaping up to......

We all remember Peter Venkman listing the side effects of a possible Armageddon, "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, incumbents running against incumbents, mass hysteria!" This fall mass hysteria may be coming to a ballot near you. Last fall voters passed charter amendments 1A and 1B, which shrunk the King County Council from thirteen seats to nine effective in 2006. Which means that this fall some incumbent council members will have to run against......