Results tagged “seattlecitycouncil”

For Seattle City Council Position #4, it's Bagshaw v. Bloom. #6: Licata v. Israel. #8: O'Brien v. Rosencrantz. (Here are the King County Elections results.) That's clocking in at 17 percent of registered voters so far.

Not so fast on the Mayor Nickels-bashing, claims the P-I. Turns out charges that he costs the city by not playing well with Olympia may be overblown, because Seattle’s legislators aren’t very good at helping Seattle themselves.

Greg Nickels is feeling pretty good this morning. He probably served himself an extra couple of pancakes, and probably broke open that bottle of boysenberry syrup he’s been saving for a special occasion, to reward himself for getting the tunnel he has always wanted.

• Sable Verity wishes us all a Happy Thanksgiving, unless of course we get shot and killed before the holiday, which is becoming all too common in Seattle these days. The blog notes that this weekend, 11 people were shot in five separate incidents and one man was stabbed--all within a 36-hour time period.
• Seems like everyone in local politics has a blog these days, including Seattle City Council member Tim Burgess. Yesterday Councilmen Burgess talked about the city budget and youth violence in Seattle, a topic that desperately needs to be addressed, preferably last Friday before 11 people were shot in 36 hours.
• The Rainier Valley Post covered one of this weekend's shootings, which left two teenagers wounded. The shooting, which took place at Rainier Avenue South and South Cloverdale, is believed to be connected to the deadly weekend shooting at Southcenter Mall.

• Hello, weekend windstorm! The neighborhood blogs were aflutter about wind damage, power outages, and waves crashing over 520.
• The Rainier Valley Post has their weekly must-read letting you know what your City Council Member is scheduled to be up to this week. Looks like an exciting week at the City Council, covering topics such as sidewalk cafes (right in time for winter!) and the Mercer mess.
• MetBlogs has something about free money--which automatically makes us click off, fearful of what identity scam is coming next. But at quick glance, it appears to be legitimate--show up and get $10 and there is some pay-it-forward aspect to the scheme.

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!

The City Council has approved Arena Sports' proposal to renovate Hangar 27 at Magnuson Park. The project, which is entirely privately funded (are you listening basketball fans?) will begin immediately, and the facility will open in 2009. The city retains ownership of the structure, however, Arena Sports will receive free rent up to the value of the improvements. Additionally, Arena Sports will offer free programs and scholarships. Nearly 50 percent of the floorspace will be available for non-sporting community events.

Is there some widespread problem about town of which we're unaware, where motorists are indiscriminately moving scooters out of the way to park their cars? Maybe because we don't own a scooter, but we haven't heard about a city-wide uproar about this. Nonetheless, a fine is being discussed to put an end to this travesty.

The Seattle City Council has overwhelmingly passed a measure to charge a 20-cent fee for every disposable bag--paper or plastic--starting January 1st, 2009. Yesterday, the council voted 6-1 in favor of the bag fee and to ban plastic foam food and drink containers.

After a committee vote yesterday, the full City Council is set to decide on Monday if Seattle will adopt a 20-cent fee for plastic bags at grocery, drug, and convenience stores, as well as a ban on polystyrene food and drink containers. If passed, the fee and ban will go into effect on January 1, 2009. Stores that use the plastic foam containers to package meat will have a year to figure out an alternative method. (May we suggest butcher paper? We imagine that is how it got its name.) While it might be annoying to get charged a few bucks for plastic bags after a big shopping trip, it will hopefully remind us to always bring a reusable bag, which is a benefit to everyone.

UNDER DA SEA: If, like Seattlest, you are fascinated with underwater life, tonight's your night to revel in the glories of the deep ocean. Seattle Symphony will be playing as a giant screen shows you images from the BBC series The Blue Planet.

Seattle City Hall was evacuated this morning because of a minor fire. A fluorescent light on the second floor caught on fire, causing embers to shower on nearby desks. City Hall employees tried to quell the fire with an extinguisher to no avail, so firefighters were called. This is the first fire in the new City Hall building, there was no damage reported. Employees returned to business as usual after a 20 minute evacuation, hopefully getting right back to the really important things, like naked swimmers using public pools and approving more condos.

In 2006, in hopes of decreasing public drunkenness, the Seattle City Council passed a ban on certain "highly fortified" alcoholic beverages in a number of Seattle neighborhoods. The controversial bans created "Alcohol Impact Areas" (AIA) in neighborhoods including Capitol Hill, the Central Area, Lower Queen Anne, SoDo, and the University District. As specified in the original ordinance, in these neighborhoods and these neighborhoods only stores were restricted from selling "low-cost, highly fortified beer and wine," which city officials believe to be favored by "the people who are chronically drunk on city streets and sidewalks."

Yesterday, Mayor Greg Nickels announced his plan for a six-year, $75 million levy to renovate Seattle's historic Pike Place Market. If passed by voters, the money would go toward renovating the Market's bathrooms, electric, ventilation, and heating systems, as well as seismic upgrades and new elevators. The century-old Pike Place Market has not undergone major renovations since the 1970s.

We spend a lot of time at the Seattlest newsroom talking about the problems bicycle riders in this city have and how the city should make it easier for us since we reduce congestion and emissions at the same time. Now we realize we’ve been ignoring the good our our two-wheeled motorized brethren (and sistern) on scooters.

Long spoken of and rarely acted upon, the renovation and remodeling of The Seattle Center was again on the docket for Monday's City Council meeting. Center officials presented a number of new design ideas for the redevelopment of the Center. Central to these are the demolishing of Memorial Stadium and The Fun Forest. Proposed uses for the space include a new outdoor amphitheatre to replace Memorial Stadium, a brand new Center House, and plans to turn the asphalt of the Fun Forest into green space.

photo by Flickr Contributor lachance

Two, our city council is old -- like, they were excited about seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show old. What is the average age, retirement? Sally Clark is alert and at full speed, but one person can't do it alone. McIver's up there "resting his eyes" throughout. These are the people in charge of guiding Seattle's future? Seriously, there has to be some generational groupthink at work. Given the UW population, representative local government ought to include someone in their 20s. It's not like the council is allowed to do anything -- everything important is handled by the Mayor's Office -- so what's the harm?

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.

The story so far: Two years ago, amid trumpets and fanfare, the City of Seattle sold the 15-story Alaska Building to developer Kent Angier, to be used for "affordable workforce housing." The selling price was $8.5 million dollars -- $500,000 to $1 million less than offers from developers interested in turning it into office space. The City says it had an unwritten understanding with Angier that the building would be used for housing. Recently, Angier announced plans to build instead a non-union Marriott hotel.

Laser Rocket Arms hates it when we call them "the new Husker Don't."

"If I were still mayor, and I knew I was coming to an event like this," Charley Royer told us before last night's political fundraiser pub quiz, "I'd make sure there wasn't a question about Seattle that I didn't know the answer to."

There's a Seattle Times editorial today that indicates that Mayor Nickels is going to deliver a State of the City speech that calls for additional police resources; 105 new cops over the next five years, which seems a little ridiculous in the World's Safest City. The editorial hints that it shares that viewpoint, but it's not enough to satisfy some who accuse the Times of supporting the mayor's new policing plan.

--Turns out 1% of the best hotels in the world are in the Seattle area.

Bellevue officials tell King County Journal reporter David Grant that the old Safeway distribution center, considered an ideal arena site, will be sold in days--but not to the new Sonics ownership group.

Something needs to be said about Erica Barnett's article in La Strangeur concerning the possibility that the City Council will make the final decision on the Viaduct without the requisite and meaningless public referendum, and that something is: "Hell Yeah!" Do we have to vote on every damn decision that's made around here? The City Council exists to make decisions on transportation infrastructure. That's what they do. Seattlest's job is to spend a little time every week trying to make them see how any decision besides the one we've made our personal lord and savior is blasphemous, and then to ridicule them when they end up worshiping at the altar of a viaduct rebuild. That's what we do. We're Americans, damn it! We rank voting just above walking on the scale of shit we hate to do!

Last night, Seattlest came in a humbling-but-deserved third in our regular trivia contest at the Old Pequliar. Ten teams were playing, so we won $10 (double our entry fee), but the first-place team raked in $70. Seattlest is there most Tuesday nights, so if you've ever got an urge to give us a run for our money, show up by 8:00.

Someday the Viaduct is going to collapse and kill a bunch of not-so-unsuspecting Seattleites and maybe a few guys from Everett. Only the elevated highway nymphs and the guy deep in the earth who pulls the earthquake levers knows when, exactly, that will be, but we have a pretty good idea that it will happen "someday." So we busy ourselves fixing it, or, failing that, arguing about how to fix it.

At 2:30 p.m. today, March 13th, the Seattle City Council is holding a hearing with members of the Washington State Department of Transportation and the Seattle Department of Transportation concerning the controversial Alaskan Way Viaduct program.