From the Jan 20 – Jan 26, 2005 issue

News

InTheHall

Conjecture & Paranoia

by Erica C. Barnett

Saturday's fundraising shindig for the People's Waterfront Coalition, held at a graceful U-District home with paintings and stately wooden staircases and the kind of rugs that would set most environmental activists back a full month's rent, raised nearly $15,000 in donations and pledges. The sizeable crowd, a mostly taupe-clad assortment of thirty- and fortysomething do-gooders and environmental patrons pulled together from the PWC's 500-person mailing list, included no less a local luminary than city council member Peter Steinbrueck, clad in paisley and corduroy and chatting up monorail board member Cleve Stockmeyer by the well-stocked bar.

Amid animated conversation and speeches by PWC co-founders Cary Moon, Grant Cogswell, and Julie Parrett, gossip was buzzing around Cogswell's impending resignation from the board of Allied Arts. Cogswell's pissed that the group won't consider the PWC's viaduct proposal; and he opposes the (reportedly pending) promotion of AA board president David Yeaworth to the new position of executive director, at a reported salary of $60,000. "My disagreements with the direction he wants to take the organization are profound," Cogswell said.

Steinbrueck, who split the party just before midnight, gave the PWC $20; not much, but more than the group's other erstwhile council supporter, Richard Conlin, a once-vocal (but now-vulnerable) PWC backer who said "something came up" to keep him at home on Saturday. Could be that Conlin's edgy about his upcoming reelection campaign against tunnel proponents Dwight Pelz and Casey Corr, who are already criticizing Conlin for failing to support the tunnel option sooner.

Speculation abounded over the weekend about who sicced Pelz onto Conlin (on Thursday, Pelz called council incumbent Richard McIver to tell McIver he still hadn't decided whether to run against him), with Pelz pals Greg Nickels (a Conlin foe) and Larry Gossett (like McIver, the only black member of a large elected body) among the leading suspects. Both Nickels and Gossett reportedly placed calls to Pelz before he jumped into Conlin's race on Friday.

Meanwhile, as if conjecture over Conlin's race wasn't political paranoia enough, word at city hall on Friday was that Paul Allen's Vulcan was scouting for candidates to run against frequent Vulcan adversary Nick Licata. No names have surfaced yet, perhaps because (if thirdhand accounts of poll results can be believed) Licata is the least politically vulnerable council incumbent up for reelection.

City Attorney Tom Carr has the left-leaning Licata's support for an innovative "community court" that would allow misdemeanor offenders to skip jail by doing community service. But the support Carr really needs is from the downtown business community--the group that's affected most by so-called "civility" crimes--which he hopes will step up and provide funding to keep the court alive.