West Seattle, Washington
26 Saturday
The City Council just officially approved its $8 million plan (which will apparently take a year to draw up, so guess the viaduct’s not going anywhere any time soon) to try to figure out how we would all get around without a viaduct or a tunnel. Press release text after the click:Read More
The Herald‘s Letters to the Editor section yields another tale of interaction gone awry.
Tough month for Mayor Nickels. First he lost his father — now he has to deal with reports that his son has been indicted for alleged casino cheating. FRIDAY EARLY AM UPDATE: Citizen Rain (new local blog aggregator) has a link to Jake Nickels’ MySpace. (The cached version seems more interesting.)
Amusing high-tech tidbit about our County Councilmember Dow C on Slog.
With so many blossoming businesses in West Seattle — West 5, Skylark, etc. — concerned about the so-called “nightlife premises legislation” that’s been making its way through the City Council, we thought you might want to know the next hearing has just been set (June 4).
Crosscut says West Seattle’s rep on the Seattle School Board, Irene Stewart, has decided not to run for re-election. UPDATE: Since our original mention, we have been forwarded the press release she sent out. Click ahead if you would like to see it:
Read More
Tonight the state House passed the domestic-partnership bill, with a fair amount of WS legislator involvement — Sen. Erik Poulsen co-sponsored the Senate version, Rep. Joe McDermott co-sponsored the House version (and invoked Alki Point during debate).
-Thanks to the reader who tipped us that Bakery Nouveau is featured on the cover of Seattle Magazine’s new “best restaurants” issue. Yum.
-A new exhibit at MOHAI will feature 19th-century paintings from a daughter of the Denny party’s namesake.
-Also from the P-I, Ted Van Dyk has a good post-viaduct-vote rant. Reminds us of the interesting sight we saw while traveling up Cali after the Charlestown meeting last night — an apartment window plastered with not only a YES ELEVATED sign, but also RECALL NICKELS and even mock Times front pages with the apartment-dweller’s fantasy future headline NICKELS DEFEATED. (Perhaps a Steinbrueck relative lives there!)
Busy dance card tomorrow night for West Seattle’s King County Councilmember Dow Constantine. He’s the guest of honor at a fundraising “roast” at West 5, kicking off his next campaign. But his staff tells us he’s hoping first to drop in and “touch base” with the gathering crowd at the Charlestown Cafe meeting, which they regret was scheduled long after the West 5 shindig was nailed down. (Afterparty, anyone?)
Tracking back a link that brought someone to our site this morning … we discovered that if you Google the phrase:
MOST FAMOUS POLITICIAN
the first thing that comes up is Hizzoner’s home page. Completely and totally our fault. (Although you can argue whether it’s good or bad to be known by that phrase.)
For what it’s worth … WS only got one shout-out in the text of the State o’ the City speech (read it and watch it here), just delivered by West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician. Even in the section that mentions tons o’construction in various neighborhoods … no mention.
Reminder — Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis talks transportation at the Fauntleroy Community Association’s community meeting at The Hall tonight. (He’s filling in for Hizzoner, who is in DC this morning to talk to Congress about global warming.)
One month after our last post on the controversy over the city’s proposed crackdown on “nightlife” businesses — the so-called “nightlife premises legislation” — opponents and supporters are about to get their day before a City Council committee. Opponents, including West Seattle restaurateurs whom you would never consider to be “nightclub” operators, contend this law will hurt their businesses and your/our right to patronize them — so they’re pleading for backup at the meeting (9:30 am Thursday, City Hall downtown) to make sure they’re not outnumbered by community groups (reportedly mostly from other parts of the city) who have rallied in support of the law. If you can’t be there in person, here’s how to contact council members to let them know what you think. If you want to read the whole ordinance for yourself, here it is.
Two months after Wind-tastrophe ’06, a new city report is out (here’s the city press release, with a link to the full report). Best quote is on page 11: “Seattle City Light should develop a more robust emergency power restoration plan for storms.” No comment.
-Want to hear the experts discuss the viaduct situation, present and future? Tonight’s the big forum at West Seattle HS (6:30-8 pm) with panelists including City Council member Jan Drago and Seattle Department of Transportation boss Grace Crunican.
-Just two nights till you can get the mayor’s office perspective from Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, courtesy of the Fauntleroy Community Association.
-Ex-govs Gary Locke and Dan Evans declare themselves anti-viaduct (though not necessarily pro-tunnel) in today’s Times.
–MIDMORNING ADD: The No Tunnel Alliance says it will “rally” 4:30 pm-6:30 pm today at 35th & Fauntleroy.
Late word from the Fauntleroy Community Association – Mayor Nickels won’t be able to appear at the community meeting in Fauntleroy a week from tomorrow, but THE MEETING IS STILL ON — with a very good (and powerful) surrogate — his righthand guy — Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis. Apparently the mayor has a sudden date to go to the nation’s capital to testify before an environmental committee in Congress.
A list of great/not-so-great moments in Seattle transportation history that’s in the Times today includes this line:
1984  Scandal-plagued high-level West Seattle Bridge survives referendum and opens.
Had no idea, about the scandal OR the vote — just the freighter crash that accelerated the bridge work. Online, we found a little bit about the scandal (design problems, city employees getting fired over them), but can’t find more about the vote. Old-timers, any enlightenment? (We weren’t here in the eighties.)
Don’t know if we’re ready for another community meeting till we truly recover from WSDPM, but this one could be good. Same location as WSDPM — The Hall at Fauntleroy. The Fauntleroy Community Association has enticed West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician to travel a few miles south from his Admiral home base to answer citizen questions at 6:30 pm March 1 (but will it be over in time for GA?). The FCA site asks that you e-mail questions, however, so we’ll have to get some clarity on whether there will be any actual audience open-mike time at this event. (We still have the same question we had two months ago — why was he virtually invisible when thousands of us were without power for days after the windstorm?)
Now our County Councilguy Dow and his fellow KCC Dems suggest we vote on the Sonics tax plan (the one co-sponsored in the Legislature by our state senator). Er, didn’t some of us already kinda vote on that sort of thing? How about we just have a daily vote on something or another so we can get all these votes out of the way more quickly?
A reader reminds us that we weren’t imagining things when we read recently that West Seattle’s State Senator Erik Poulsen is co-sponsoring the bill to extend various taxes to raise up to half a BILLION bucks for a new Sonics arena. Um, what part of the overwhelming yes vote on I-91 didn’t he understand? If you want to ask him yourself, start here.
… seems to be the message Seattle Public Schools can take away from the “special election.” Both props are passing in a big way.
2 hours and 40 minutes, but nobody was really fired up till the very end … shame, since by then, about 95% of what started as an SRO crowd had long since fled into the fog.Read More
So the very last speaker at The Windstorm/Snowpocalypse/Disaster-Prep County Council Meeting in Fauntleroy tonight was a literal space cadet; yet his comment was the truest of the night. A onetime political candidate now best known as Goodspaceguy (name changed to reflect his interest in space colonization), said something along the lines of this: “Honorable Councilmembers, a whole lot of people got up and left, disgusted, because they waited and waited and didn’t get a chance to talk. I respectfully suggest that next time you let the PEOPLE talk first, so that if they have to leave after a while, they can do it when it’s the presenters’ turn, not theirs.” A-men. Not a single NON-politico/bureaucrat got a chance to open her/his mouth until well past an hour in. More in a bit.
| 6 COMMENTS