Today in headlines: rich white men doing things. more ›

Occupy Seattle's Port Shutdown, Seattle City Council's thrilling legislative decisions, why one should never drink and drive, and a British newspaper is forced to apologize for its bad behavior...A pretty active Monday. more ›

Happy Thanksgiving! Reported last night: a security guard intimidating a four-year-old, Snohomish County having all kinds of water problems, the outcome of Phoenix Jones's pepper-spray fiasco and a recovered purse. more ›

SHARE, a local, self-organized, democratic organization of homeless and formally homeless individuals, re-opened its 15 indoor shelters last night. The group had cited the loss of a $44,000 FEMA grant as the reason for their shelter closure, beginning their 11-day encampment outside the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which they say usually involved around 70 people. The grant, they say, was restored, in addition to $25,000 from a successful auction. But despite their efforts, they saw no sweet, sweet Microsoft money. more ›

Everyone's getting investigated! Actually, no, just the SPD (twice) and two cycling advocacy groups (in a case unrelated to the SPD). Amazon reps local sci-fi, and Occupy Seattle coverage courtesy of us. Happy hump day. more ›

Way back in March of 2002, the City entered a Consent Decree with El Centro de la Raza and SHARE/WHEEL, the organization that operates homeless encampments Tent City and Nickelsville. This agreement due to "exceptional circumstances" "pressing needs" of the city's homeless population, provided a set of guidelines for operation of Tent City over the following 10 years. The City Council Housing, Human Services, Health and Culture Committee will hear public comment today on a proposed new homeless encampment ordinance to replace the existing policy, put forward by 2001's Consent Decree, set to expire this March. The biggest difference? While the new ordinance recognizes that secular organizations can host encampments under currently existing laws, SHARE/WHEEL says that the proposed ordinance essentially nullifies their agreement -- for everyone except religious organizations. (Updated with comments from Nick Licata's office!) more ›

Ever not taken a sick day because you needed the cash? If the City Council doesn't change its mind, a bill could be passed Monday that mandates paid time off if you're sick. more ›

An officer's right to privacy vs. the public's right to know. Not an easy balance to find - that's exactly what the State Supreme Court did, however, in a very significant ruling yesterday morning. more ›

Public officials behaving badly and some sad news for Seattle sports fans - and no, it's not about Hasselbeck leaving the Seahawks. Although that's sad too. Happy Wednesday. more ›

Last night, Seattle's City Council met for apublic hearing, regarding Nick Licata's proposal to mandate paid sick leave for any and all workers in the City of Seattle. Spectators, small businesses and employees of various businesses filled nearly every corner of the Council's Chambers--many to show their support. more ›

The City Council passed legislation extending the maximum building heights in SoDo. Here's why it's a good thing. more ›

Tonight, Randy Johnson will make his final pitching appearance at Safeco Field. Considering that without Randy Safeco Field may never have been built, it’s probably also Nick Licata's last chance to enact his revenge. more ›

NICK LICATA'S AFTERNOON DELIGHT: The City Council's Nick Licata wants to save the P-I this afternoon. KOMO puts it bluntly [UPDATE: and wrongly, says Licata's office--Licata wants simply to discuss newspapers formed as an L3C (low-profit, limited liability corporation).]: "Licata's plan: convince the city to intervene by putting up its own money to keep in print the oldest newspaper in town." He's convened a Superfriends panel--Roger Simpson and Douglas Underwood, Professors of Communication from the University of Washington; attorney Anne Bremner, Co-Chair of the Committee for a Two Newspaper Town; Beth Hester, programming manager for Seattle Channel; Liz Brown of the PacNW Newspaper Guild; David Brewster, publisher of Crosscut; and Jennifer Towery, President of the Peoria Newspaper’s Guild--to help him. Unfortunately he's made one huge mistake--most people are at work at 2 p.m. If you're near a TV, tune in to Seattle Channel 21, or you can watch the live webcast. more ›

Mayor Greg Nickels thinks so! But a City Council committee--and thank God for this--shut him down immediately, saying, "WTF R U thinking Nickels?" Nickels' intentions were to make the city's executive salaries competitive, but Councilman Licata smacked that one down. "It's bad timing," he told the Times. Damn right, it's bad timing; it's worse timing this year than it was both years previous, when Nickels made the same request for raises. During a year when the President-elect tells Barbara Walters on national television that in his opinion CEOs should forgo their Christmas bonuses, what kind of reasonable man thinks it's a great time to ask for executive raises? more ›

The rumor weed is running rampant across the lawn of Seattle's local politics regarding a possible Greg Smith run for Mayor next year. It looks like he might even have a fighting chance, though the well-funded Nickels is certain to run for a third term. There are other names persistently sprouting up here and there as possible opponents: former and current City Councilmen Peter Steinbrueck and Nick Licata (respectively), and--hell, why not consider familiar Nickels foe Mark Sidran again? What do you think? Which of these men should be our next Mayor? Our poll will close tomorrow at noon, and opinions are welcome in the comments. more ›

Past jefe of the Seattle City Council Nick Licata just wrote us a note about sidewalks and the Mercer Mess. "I thought your blog readers would be interested in knowing about this coming Monday's Forum on Providing Sidewalks and Scaling Down The Mercer Project," says Nick, all helpful-like. Oh, butter wouldn't melt in his mouth! more ›

At the risk of stirring the pot, if Ceis doesn't think a member of the Seattle City Council can weigh in on a $60,000 pay increase--while implying that the Mayor's Office is willing to look the other way at any Council staff salary-plundering so long as Hizzoner gets the staff he wants--we will personally sit down with Ceis and explain why we think that's a terrible, terrible precedent to set. You could argue that it's the polar opposite of the example we might hope from city leadership, though ironically, his quote does point to the need for a good communications director. (This mutual respect for autonomy seems to apply only to personnel decisions, given the city's attempt to raid the Council's tenant relocation fund.) more ›

Capitol Hill's hardest working man in show business, CHAC's Matthew Kwatinetz, has been devoting long hours to the survival of Odd Fellows Hall as an arts space, ever since he found out about the planned sale. more ›

One of the oldest jokes in the book is at the expense of the Sixth Amendment: how can twelve people who couldn't get out of jury duty be counted as your peers? Juries, after all, are populated by the unemployed and retirees--people who don't have to actually for a living. more ›

End of May, we posted about how the city sold the Alaska Building to a developer, with the understanding that it would be turned into affordable "workforce" housing. The city took a loss of somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million because of that stipulation, Mayor Nickels was able to gesture grandly at his affordable housing gesture, and then Kauri Investments Ltd. and Ariel Development got to thinking and they were all, "Hey, you know what would be better than affordable housing is a 250-unit Marriott hotel! People who work stay in hotels a lot, so it's not even a big difference when you look at it." more ›

City Council President Nick Licata will be fulfilling his wettest dream on Thursday when he testifies before Congress on the negative economic impact of publicly-funded sports arenas (something we wrote our senior thesis on, thank you very much). more ›

It’s been over a week since the Viaduct vote, and we’ll admit it, we have no idea what the new plan is. There was some sort of announcement right after the vote that the state will spend some $950 million to spruce it up over the next few years. So, is that it? After years and years of debate, plans, and drawings of ethnically diverse group of people enjoying a better waterfront, was the solution simply to make the existing Viaduct stronger? What are we missing here? more ›

Tomorrow is fake Viaduct Vote Day, and your meaningless ballots must be postmarked by then. The election is all mail, so you will not have the option to vote at the polls. more ›

AUTHOR, AUTHOR: In Bich Minh Nguyen's memoir, Stealing Buddha's Dinner, a young family escapes from Vietnam shortly before the fall of Saigon and relocates to Grand Rapids, Michigan. "In her recreation of a world populated by family ties, Ritz crackers, and Judy Blume books, she has captured the 1980s with perfection," says Kirkus Reviews. more ›

The Seattle Public Library hosted 'A Salute to Tim Egan' last night at the inconvenient hour of 5:30 PM. more ›

>>>Hugo House, 7:30pm. Screenwriters Salon: Geoff Miller and Mark Handley invite you to bring your questions about format, technique, structure, dialogue, writing characters, and how to use your catering gig to hand your script to celebs. $5 general/$2 students. Free to members. more ›

Poor Mayor Nickels. The news isn't good for him these days. His plan to replace the crumbling Viaduct with a Big Dig-style tunnel is going the same way as the Seattle Monorail Project he helped kill. The Washington State Department of Transportation released estimates that showed Nickels' $2.8 billion price tag climbing to $4.6 billion. And now, according to articles in The Seattle Times and The Seattle P-I, Nickels is taking the choice out of the voters' hands this November. more ›

We walked down to Occidental Square for our Monday lunch field trip and unfortnunately didn't see much. Supposedly the cutting has begun in Pioneer Square and trees are being felled, but the area lacked any chainsaw buzz or shouted "tim-berrrrrrr"s around noon. We didn't stick around to gawk, though, so maybe they were between trees. A nice little pile of fresh firewood was sitting around. more ›

Lost in the excitement over the Seattle City Council's big week was the Seahawks first trip to the Super Bowl. However, it's not like you can blame Seattleites for ignoring this triumph of footballity, not only have the candidates for Jim Compton's vacated seat been whittled down from twelve to six, but the race for council president took a surprising turn yesterday when Richard Conlin withdrew his name and Nick Licata was declared the winner. more ›