When I first moved to Seattle from the suburbs, Will, who used to write here, and I took the bus somewhere. We caught the bus in Westlake Park. This was pre-ORCA Card and he took some cash out of his wallet and counted it out to make sure it was right before the bus came while we continued to talk. Someone must have saw him with his money out, because they came up to us and asked, “You buying?”

Up until a few weeks ago, that’s more or less the feel of Westlake Park whenever I go through it after dark. Now, it’s my city, and I’ve never avoided the park because of the people selling drugs there. It’s certainly safe enough for me as an able bodied fairly young man to walk through. But, it’s not exactly the best part of town. But now, every night it’s glorious, and vibrant. And the drug dealing has left.

So whatever the value of City Hall Park versus Westlake versus other potential occupy sites going forward, Westlake Park is better for the occupation.

– Sometimes you read a story about a new policy and you have a tough time with the fact that it’s actually a new policy because it’s so blindingly obvious that it should have been happening for years. Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion is one of those for me.

– I support these rule changes, Liquor Control Board.

– Looks like a good start.

– Another sure sign that Occupy Wall Street is on the right track.

– If I’ve been a bit Occupy Seattle heavy recently, well, here’s some info on Occupy Olympia.

– I FOUND A PUNCHLINE FOR YOUR COMIC STRIP

– Michael Schur is one of the best writers there is, but I sure do like any Red Sox fan suffering.

– I’m still going to get bumblebees and honey bees mixed up some times.

Right now the protesters are building a canvas structure in the middle of the plaza at Westlake park. The rumor is that the police were taking it down, but other than a few bike cops under the awning, I don’t see any police. I was going to head home after the GA, but I guess I’ll be staying here a bit longer. Updates if anything happens.

… So it’s about a 5 foot cube with polls on each corner. 3 sides are canvas and the other side is open as an entrance. There isn’t a roof, but they’ve put some bamboo and some Christmas lights. There are half a dozen people sitting cozy inside.

While I was writing the paragraph above a bike cop rode by, slowed down, took a look and then went back to join the others.

… I apologize that this update is super boring, but most of the cops rode off a few minutes ago. There are only 2 left. I tried to see if the ones who left were massing somewhere, but I went a couple blocks up Pine where they went, but they weren’t there. No police cars, so I doubt the city will do anything until 10:00 if they do anything at all.

… Still nothing, so I’m going to grab some warmer clothing. Will be back before 10:00. There have been a few people who said they think tonight is the night. But rumors fly around like you wouldn’t believe.

… I’m back and so are the police. There are about a dozen at the mall. There are 3 cars and a wagon as well as the ones bike. There were a few riding through the park. I don’t know if that’s been going on. Still, it’s quite festive at the park.

[9:40] About 4 cops just walked up to the people in the structure. Now there’s a crowd. I can’t get close, but it looks like the police have left.

[9:51] They’re kind of milling about but I counted 30 officers at the mall. Still, only one wagon, so I imagine there will be arrests but not in large numbers.

[9:59] The police have moved into walked through the park. No announcement to leave yet.

[10:06] The police are by the Bank of America (and the medical tent). Still no announcement to leave. The chanting by the other structures have quieted down a bit.

[10:25] The police came up to the structure. Some are there and some are under a nearby awning.. The structure in the park has 4 or 5 layers of people.

[10:29] Looks like the first person has been taken out. I still haven’t heard an order to leave the park.

[10:33] A second person taken out.

[10:37] “You are the 99%” directed to the cops

[10:51] The structure is down. About 10 people were arrested so far and there are a few more where the structure was still getting arrested.

[11:17] Those last few people are still in a tight circle. Still no announcement to leave the park.

[11:30] The police have cleared out without arresting the last 5 who were together. There’s pandemonium here.

[11:54] I’m out for the night, but there are still quite a few people around.

The police arrested 1 (I think) person in a tent and then all left. About 2 dozen cops mostly bike cops but a few in cars made the announcement that the park was closed at about 10:15. They took down the tent only and arrested the person.

There was another group of people willing to get arrested, who locked hands, but it appears they were left alone. No riot gear or attempts to clear the entire park. As far as I could tell nobody was pepper sprayed. While, once again, I think the arrests were a serious mistake, I applaud the police for their professionalism.

– it’s wrong-headed to think that voting down a fee will somehow make driving affordable.

– Maybe now we can raise taxes on the richest members of society.

– You see a certain amount of commentary complaining that the young people involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests should put down their signs carping about student loans and big banks and go get a job. What the commentators don’t say is that no one is willing to hire them.

– The freeloaders who don’t pay federal income taxes.

– This sort of vigilante justice will probably become more common in the Internet age, so let’s at least try to get the right people.

– It was especially nice to see the handful of cartoonists pretending to care so very much about [Steve Jobs] , but just not enough to know he’d been a Buddhist for decades and in fact made several speeches about how it guided his life and career and how imagining he’d be in front of St. Peter

– The Occupy Seattle Calendar of events (H/T Howie on Facebook)

– I don’t know if this says much about the Republicans as it does about the difficulty of comparing polls against each other. Candidates will have a higher name recognition right after a person on the other end of the phone mentions them.

– Whatever the legal status of this arrangement, it is morally wrong. If those who lost their houses in the housing market collapse are getting their just desserts, what do you call what the banksters are getting?

– Nobel Laureate Parking

– I’ve never seen an episode of Glee in my life, so I didn’t understand about 90% of the words in this Lindy West recap, but it was quite funny.

I love the Metro, but there are a few routes that are trouble. The 358, that goes up Aurora Ave N. and through some of the worst parts of Downtown is one of those routes. So don’t think of the following exchange as typical, or anything:

Homeless person #1: “I’m getting off at the next stop, do you have a light I could borrow?”

Homeless person #2: “Sure here.”

Homeless person #1: “Oh a Bic. They’re pretty good. Last a long time.”

Homeless person #2: “Yeah. Well no. Not if you smoke crack anyway.”

And sorry if it’s rather Occupy heavy, that’s mostly what I’ve been reading.

– It will be interesting to see how the leaders of more established liberal institutions interact with the Occupy people.

– Humbled and lucky.

– While of course, I don’t like the city arresting protesters, I’m glad they’re still working to figure out a way to let them stay (I’m not saying the Occupy people should or shouldn’t take the city up on this, only that I’m glad it’s being offered, and that there is a dialogue).

And here’s some non Occupy stuff:

– This fall, Seattle Schools reopened Viewlands and Rainier View elementary schools. In the next few years, the district could reopen Van Asselt, Columbia, Boren and Hughes elementaries.

– Health Care Flow Chart.

– Scott Brown really could have probably won this rhetorically. Instead he just decided to be an asshole.

One of the things I hear again and again from critics of the Occupy movement is that they lack a set of coherent demands. That they don’t have all the solutions yet. But here’s the thing: we’re not at solutions yet, we’re still identifying the problem. The coherent demand is stop. Stop the marginalization of working and poor people. Stop the outsized corporate power. Stop the cozy relationships that allow a few people to profit at the expense of the rest of us. Stop. The status quo isn’t working.

There’s time for figuring out the solutions, and the people here will probably fracture when that time comes. But right now we’re still identifying the problems. So right now there’s a place for the moderates and socialists, for the Ron Paul supporters and for the union folks. They all know things are shit. They all know this can’t hold.

1) Crime is down in the city, but we’ve seen some horrible incidents with the police in recent years. How do we ensure public safety and not have those sorts of things happen in the future?

I applaud and empathize with the police and other first responders, and know from firsthand experience just how tough these jobs are. However, like any other public employees, law enforcement workers need to be accountable to the public. Given the recent spate of widely publicized incidents, and the deep mistrust of the Seattle Police Department in some communities, the current accountability system is clearly not working. We need to work proactively to restore trust in our police, especially among immigrant, refugee and communities of color. At the same time, SPD also has a responsibility to openly and honestly review their training and examine an internal culture that is clearly not serving the city as well as it can.

I will push for and support an end to any and all law enforcement training programs that have contributed to the unacceptable rash of SPD incidents involving abuse of power. The Office for Professional Accountability has not been an effective tool for review of police actions; it needs a mix of civilian and law enforcement representation and subpoena power to better review SPD actions. And SPD must undertake a thorough review of its training policies and procedures to ensure that, in the course of a difficult job that often requires split-second decisions, officers have instilled in them cultural awareness and the tools needed to maintain public safety, de-escalate confrontations, and treat civilians with courtesy and respect.

I also support a greater re-emphasis on community policing, and programs that enable officers to build relationships with neighborhood watch groups, residents, and business owners and employees.

2) Now that the Viaduct is coming down, what should the waterfront look like?

Now that construction of the downtown tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct is underway, over the next several months city council will face the next phase of the debate: how best to use the newly available waterfront acreage that removal of the viaduct will create. I believe that the final plan must meet several critical objectives:

It must meet critical infrastructure needs. We need to not only replace the aging seawall, but anticipate the climate change-induced rising water levels of coming decades.

It must make the waterfront accessible to the general public. Plans should emphasize public access over private development. The downtown waterfront must be usable by all residents, workers, and tourists, not just those who can afford to pay a price.

It must be affordable. Given Seattle’s budget constraints, and the possible additional costs of tunnel construction itself, this is not the time for the city to once again opt for an expensive mega-project. One preliminary plan costs nearly a billion dollars. This is simply not realistic or wise. Seattle can not afford a blank check for waterfront development.

It must preserve waterfront jobs. The waterfront plan will almost certainly create tourism-related jobs, but it should not do so at the expense of the existing, well-paying jobs of Seattle’s working waterfront.

It must be accountable. The plan has specific budgetary and completion benchmarks. Council must not only approve the plan, but continue to exercise oversight to ensure that both the tunnel and the waterfront reconstruction come in on time and in budget.

It must ensure that public safety is an integral part of the overall landscape design. The present Freeway Park design has made it an instrument of criminal activities and neighborhood concern. The waterfront landscape design elements must avoid repeating similar design problems.

Once such a criteria is agreed upon than the city can move forward with incorporating fun elements like a venue for waterfront concerts, arts and cultural sites that showcase the indigenous historical contributions of first nation people and those of ethnic origins, immigrant and refugee groups who now call Seattle home.

This is a rare opportunity to remake one of the most visible parts of Seattle. We need to do it right. On council, I will work hard to ensure that any plan meets these goals and delivers a downtown waterfront worthy of a world class city.

3) As the great recession drags on, the city budget is still hurt. What do we need to cut, what do we need to keep, and do we need to raise more money via taxation?

The Seattle City Council recently voted unanimously to place a $60 vehicle license fee increase on the November ballot. I urge voters to reject this proposal as being the wrong plan, at the wrong time, to achieve the wrong goals.

It’s the wrong plan. The proposed car tab increase is an extremely regressive flat tax that will disproportionately hurt the poor and unemployed.

It’s the wrong time. We are in a struggling economy. King County Council has already voted to impose an additional $20 car tab hike that will also affect all city car owners; the city council already imposed its original $20 car tab assessment months ago; and the city council has also put a doubling of the Families and Education Levy on the November ballot.

It’s the wrong goals. The $204 million to be raised by the car tab hike during the next ten years will be divided primarily among transit projects (49 percent); road repair and maintenance (29 percent); and bicycle and pedestrian projects (22 percent). All three of these areas are misjudged. The car tab hike is being widely promoted as a “transit measure,” but that’s misleading. Instead of buses or light rail, much of the money is dedicated to two streetcar projects, given the overwhelming demand for more bus – not streetcar – service; this is an unconscionable misuse of scarce transportation taxing authority.

It’s time to balance our support for these transportation modes with other transportation needs. Both the bicycle/pedestrian funding and the streetcar lines are nice “wish list” projects that pale in importance next to the over one billion dollars in backlogged road and bridge repairs. The part of this ten year tax allocated to repairs and maintenance is less than one-seventeenth of what would be needed even to address today’s backlog. The maintenance backlog is a serious public safety issue that affects cars, buses, bicycles, and every other type of vehicle that uses our streets and bridges.

We need to focus on what matters, capital infrastructure maintenance should be the priority. On par with this for the general fund would be maintenance of the safety net for those most vulnerable. Regressive taxation is not the answer for addressing revenue shortfalls in the future. Seattle should take the leadership in working with legislative representatives from the 36th, 46th, 43rd, 37th, 34th and the 11th in working with legislative allies to urge a WA State income tax to replace all regressive taxes and to lower current sales tax rates.

4) With its budget shrunk at least until the end of the recession what should Seattle parks look like?

The biggest problem for the Parks & Recreation Department in recent years has been lack of accountability to local park users and neighbors, particularly in park controversies like the Gas Works Park concerts, the proposed Woodland Park Zoo parking garage, a redesign of Occidental Park, and many others. There were two common themes to those controversies: pressure from the city to use its parks to generate new income streams, and lack of responsiveness by both Parks Department leadership and city council to neighborhood concerns.

Those controversies have subsided after the departure of longtime Parks and Recreation head Ken Bounds and his patron, former mayor Greg Nickels. But the pressures to generate park income for the city, and the need for oversight by and accountability to the city council, remain. Parks Department leadership and members of the council’s Parks and Seattle Center need to balance the sometimes conflicting needs of the many constituencies of the parks – picnickers, sports fields users, special events patrons, dog lovers, etc. – with those of park neighbors and the general interests of the city.

The goal of keeping Seattle Parks free, safe, and accessible for all Seattle residents should be paramount. Safety is not limited to people and should be extended to keep fighting breeds of dogs out of Off-leash areas, and parks for the safety of other pets and people. User fees should be kept affordable and other income streams – whether park concessions, special events, or more creative attempts to raise desperately needed revenues for the city – should only be undertaken if the impact on that primary goal is minimal. Revenue shortfalls will continue as the recession continues. Parks are places where naming rights and advertisement for a fee could be better utilized to assist with park maintenance and expenses.

5) What is the Seattle’s role in education and public transportation given how important they are to the city, but that other agencies are tasked with them?

The City has made a huge investment in Seattle Public Schools by taxing citizens to invest in a variety of support services for students. Overall the city should and must do a better job of managing the Education Levy dollars so that the wrap around services being funded can assist the school district in raising academic achievement and graduation rates. Dropout rates are unacceptably high. African-American and Native American graduation rates have declined in the last decade. Our schools often haven’t been successful in educating some groups of students ESL students, lower income students and students from African –American, Native American and Latino cultural groups. We’re not being smart to ensure that we are leveraging city influence on the schools to establish some targeted goals and benchmarks to be measured against. The city can also do a much better job working in partnership with the school district to support administrative areas like Human Resource training, shared staff between the cities Park and Recreational staff who oversees the fields and the school district’s garden and janitorial staff who have some similar and shared responsibilities for the same properties. We need to facilitate ways to keep school district gyms and recreational areas open to the public in the early evenings and on weekends. North and South end schools can be paired to support one another much like the Sister City International relationships. In the end, the Families and Education Levy need to be supported but at the same time, we need to build into it some real specific benchmarks for accountability.

The primary role of city government in public transit is to oversee urban planning, zoning, and development in such a way that it both encourages transit use and makes transit itself more efficient. The city government needs to encourage and support a healthy mix of transportation modes; there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. As Seattle moves to greater density, it should both concentrate much of that increased density in areas with good transit service and work to ensure that transit can adapt adequately in areas where demand will increase due to new development.

There have been various proposals over the years to combine transit agencies in the region, particularly Metro and Sound Transit. Depending on the details, I would seriously consider such a proposal. The coordination and elimination of redundancy amongst different agencies is better, but there’s more to be done, and having one bureaucracy to fund rather than several would also result in cost savings and improved efficiency – savings that, hopefully, could be redirected into expanded service.

The Stranger is reporting from the scene. The last tent has come down, and a dozen or so arrests have been made. I’m not seeing any reports of pepper spray or tazering and the police aren’t in riot gear, so it could have been worse. Still, a damn shame that it’s happened.

I’m going to head down to Westlake park, and see what’s going on. Will update this post as appropriate.

[update 5:43] There are 100-150 people or so. Mostly in one group South of the fountain and a smaller group directly across the street from the mall. I don’t see any police around, but there are a few empty police cars parked. Some have parked under the awning of the building with the Sees and the Tully’s. People are handing out doughnuts and pizza. Others are playing music. It’s a peaceful scene.

[update 5:51] a few of the signs:

– We are the 99%
– Occupy Seattle
– Good Jobs Peace and Medicine for all
– Tax Wall Street
– No Afghanistan War

[update 6:09] People are telling me there will be a “general assembly” at 6:30. Nobody I talked to knew exactly what that meant though. My battery is pretty low, so I’m shutting down until then.

[update 6:34] The first item on the agenda is retaking.

[update 6:41] They’re still deciding how to make the decisions.

[update 6:50] I can’t really hear anyone, so I’m going to try to find a better spot, my apologies.

[update 7:06] We’re coalescing around staying here or going to another park: City Hall, Seattle Center, Freeway Park. I think we’re coming around to staying here or Seattle Center if we’re kicked out, but leaning toward here. But again, I can’t hear everything, so that makes it harder.

[update 7:14] To the people honking: you’re awesome, but making it even tougher to hear.

[update 7:20] I just talked to a woman at the food tent. She says they’d like to be able organize hot meals, especially Midweek at breakfast or lunch. squirlqueen@gmail if you, or your church, etc. can help. Once a week hot meals would be great. Someone else said anyone with any food, they’ll take it.

[7:32 update] My battery is pretty close to dead, but it sounds like they’re staying put. I’m going to recharge it, and grab some food. I’m out for a while.

[9:40 update] I’m back at Westlake. A few dozen people are along 4th Ave and every time the light turns, and a rush of cars come by, cars are honking. People are milling about. I have no idea how many.

[9:46 update] There’s only one police car. I don’t know if cops are massing elsewhere, or if they just aren’t around.

[10:27 update] The rumor was that police would clear people out at 10:00, and that hasn’t happened. I’ve been told people with writing on their arms are willing to get arrested (it’s legal info). The people I talked to now and earlier have said that the people saying “fuck the police” etc, don’t represent the majority. But I guess they were the only ones with megaphones. It sounds like a total of 30 people arrested.

I’m probably heading home soon, but I can’t tell you how brave the people here willing to get arrested, willing to spend the night in the cold, drizzly, hard ground, willing to be seen are. I can’t tell you how proud I am of each of them.

– I’ve been riveted to the #occupyseattle thread. Looks like no arrests last night.

– People who point out that it’s bad to use racist language to name places are the real racists.

– Wow, Politico needs to get out more.

– Conservatives frequently claim that casual sex is bad for young women, but this study makes a persuasive case that what’s actually bad is the judgment of casual sex. Women may enjoy hooking up just as much as dudes — and college students understand this. But the stigma against women’s sexuality means having casual sex with someone you later date can cause power imbalances down the line.

– One of you must have stepped on a butterfly or something.

1) Crime is down in the city, but we’ve seen some horrible incidents with the police in recent years. How do we ensure public safety and not have those sorts of things happen in the future?

In many categories rates of crime are down in Seattle. However, that didn’t make my neighbors around Graham Hill School feel any better last spring when there were more than a dozen home break-ins in the area. It also didn’t matter to the families when the young pregnant woman was shot and killed in south Rainier Beach in the spring. It hasn’t mattered to any of the Pioneer Square or Belltown people I’ve spoken with who are angry and frustrated by on-going street dealing and violence.

We make progress by staying focused on the places we know experience trouble, policing them consistently, engaging the surrounding community to build stronger families and institutions, and connecting people with options that change lives, like Community Court, Drug Court and Mental Health Court.

We’ve all seen too many cell phone-captured incidents on television of incidents we don’t associate with the vast, vast majority of officers who do a great job. Fundamentally, there’s no place for abuse by any public servant. We avoid incidents like the few we’ve seen by investing in great recruitment (for problem solvers from all parts of our community), training and supervision, and, when necessary, in clear discipline. In the wake of the John T. Williams tragedy I joined with the other members of the Council’s Public Safety Committee to put forward a set of 11 recommendations to the Chief of Police and the Mayor. The recommendations touch on investigation procedures, department transparency, supervisory expectations, hiring and training. While a handful of the recommendations will require contract negotiations, many can be executed immediately by the Chief of Police and Mayor. Some require further vetting with communities of color and officers. Diversity and sensitivity training are a constant process. I don’t believe that work is ever done.

2) Now that the Viaduct is coming down, what should the waterfront look like?

Whether rain or shine, Seattle’s Central Waterfront will be a place we want to visit to see the water, perhaps touch the water, take visitors, go jogging, walk the dog, sit on the grass, catch a concert, watch a street performer. As we walk, wheel or ride from north to south we’ll move through zones with different character or activities depending upon how the seawall is rebuilt in that section and on how much right-of- way is recaptured when the Viaduct comes down. The reclaimed area will be well- maintained and programmed through a successful partnership between public and private (both for-profit and foundation) funders. Surface transportation will effectively move people and goods, but also be minimal in its physical spread. The Waterfront will be an awesome place to experience the every-day beauty of our city’s surroundings, all watched over by the Olympics and Seattle’s own skyline.

3) As the great recession drags on, the city budget is still hurt. What do we need to cut, what do we need to keep, and do we need to raise more money via taxation?

The challenge during this very, very, very slow economic recovery is to protect the core services required of local government (police, fire, clean water and mobility infrastructure to name a few) without hampering our future success in areas not considered core services but which enable us to be a great place to make a life (affordable housing, human services, community-building and urban planning to name a few).

My top General Fund budget priorities are public safety (patrol officers and firefighters), survival services for low-income and at-risk people in our city, and protecting areas where our spending leverages other dollars and shows measurable outcomes. The Neighborhood Matching Fund is an example of the latter. NMF is the catalyst and boost that produces not just hardscape projects all over our city, but yields a stronger, more resilient community as a result of neighborhood partnerships.

As the economy recovers to the point where we see additional revenue, I am committed to returning to the SPD hiring plan abandoned with the economic downturn. I believe we need to be hiring to both replace retiring officers and to increase the overall number of officers on patrol. I would also like to invest new dollars into more effective shelter programs, ones that provide 24-hour shelter, better meet the needs of people currently sleeping outdoors, and ones that show positive results moving people into housing.

We need to cut or restructure efforts that don’t yield measurable results. This is easier said than done. We have a great deal of recently compiled information on both general crime prevention efforts and youth violence prevention efforts. The efforts under way, involving millions of dollars, serve community needs. They involve great community volunteers and city staff, and they serve constituencies. However, not all the efforts underway can demonstrate through outcomes that they move the needle in a positive direction when it comes to crime.

Note: In this answer I’m addressing the city’s core budget. I favor other infrastructure investments (street care connections and extensions, better street infrastructure, a great waterfront) but these are topics being discussed in relation to supplemental revenue sources.

4) With its budget shrunk at least until the end of the recession what should Seattle parks look like?

The City of Seattle enjoys a Department of Parks & Recreation that runs the spread from natural open spaces (East Duwamish Greenbelt, for instance) to heavily-scheduled recreation fields (Woodland Park, Delridge and Dahl, for instance), tiny skate dots up to recreation and teen life complexes (Garfield, for instance). We serve thousands of people, some of whom have deep pockets some of whom don’t know where they’ll find their next meal. Parks and parks facilities and beloved and the classic government service – a community “good” not expected to make a profit. The problem is we can’t continue running the system at the subsidy levels we have now. DPR has been hit hard in the past couple of budget cycles. We’ve cut budgets, raised fees and demanded more revenue be generated out of community centers and boating facilities. While DPR receives a charter-mandated level of minimum funding that level is nowhere near the cost of running the system we have now. Additionally, you can find plenty of people who believe we short-change ourselves via less-than-regular maintenance of our active park spaces. We can raise fees only so far before we lose the ability to attract the kids and adults our ballfields, courts and community centers should serve.

City parks should be beautiful and well maintained. Community center activities should be diverse in content, co-determined with the community, and accessible to anyone regardless of income. Facilities should be spread through the city with regard to great transit, proximity to density and with regard to social equity. The city should continue to partner with the Associated Recreation Council to run programming and should be more aggressive about finding other programming partners; groups that can fill our community centers, pools, fields and courts during the days and evenings to generate some additional earned income. We should also work closely with ARC, the Parks Foundation and others on additional ways to under-write the costs incurred when low-income kids sign up for swimming, the computer lab, tennis, rowing, etc. Perhaps an endowment to under-write partial costs for kids who fall under a defined family income threshold.

5) What is Seattle’s role in education and public transportation given how important they are to the city, but that other agencies are tasked with them?

High quality public schools and safe, efficient, comfortable transit are key if we are to be successful in our urban development goals. While City government directly controls neither of these areas we can and do play a significant role in shaping the success of both systems in Seattle. With both education and transportation Seattle’s opportunities can be found in setting clear expectations, demanding accountability, and furthering our goals through partnership.

In terms of expectations, I have been a part of ongoing work with the Seattle Scholl Board about our mutual interest in high performing neighborhood schools. We have a long way to go in the south half of the city, but I have lead conversations in Rainier Beach and other neighborhoods about what we want from our neighborhood schools. With regard to Metro, we have a transit plan (currently be revised) that sets a course for “frequent” transit headways of 10 minutes. The Transit Master Plan serves as a clear statement of expectations for a transit plan in the city (involving both Metro and Sound Transit) that supports our city and regional growth goals.

With regard to demanding accountability, I am using the commitment to neighborhood schools, the school “report cards,” and school visits as a way to track progress on improvement. We’re also using the outcome requirements attached to funding from the Families & Education Levy as a way to produce accountability. In the transit realm, the city has flexed accountability muscles after snowstorm shutdowns and, in less crisis fueled times, in determining where Rapid Ride routes should run. I’ll put in a plug for a colleague – Councilmember Tom Rasmussen. Tom has done a terrific job building relationships and trust with electeds from other cities and King County on the Regional Transit Committee and the Transit Task Force. Through this work we have built a new agreement regarding Metro service allocations with better outcomes (at least theoretically) for Seattle.

Partnership plays out on an every-day level and through special efforts like the Families & Education Levy renewal proposal before voters this fall, Transit Now (passed by voters in 2006) and the maintenance and mobility car tabs proposal slated for this fall. These are supplemental dollars earmarked for specific objectives via the schools or Metro. The funding helps Seattle Public Schools and Metro with system objectives and ensures Seattle gets specific services and outcomes important to our goals. On a regular basis I work in partnership with Seattle Public Schools on facilities and neighborhood development issues that come up related to the Council’s Committee on the Built Environment, the committee I chair. I look for opportunities to make facilities changes logical and predictable for the school system and the community, and I look for opportunities to weave school system planning into our work planning for new development in urban villages.

– Always, always, always check the ellipses when a conservative quotes something to make a point (in fact, it’s a good idea in general).

– The Trib is right about the pain budget cuts in the special session can cause. But still, not a word about raising taxes.

– Reading Unnecessary Journalism Phrases is going to waste a lot of my time.

– I don’t stay up at night worrying if Rick Santorum is a jackass.

– Does anyone know anything about Michael Baumgartner?

– Anyone seen Saving Aimee?