MEINERT IN MELEE! Bar owner David Meinert ended up in a public shoving match with a parks activist at a press conference on Monday, July 21. "This guy, who was a pretty big dude," Meinert told The Stranger after the incident, "just literally grabbed me and shoved me out of the way." Meinert was manning the door at a yes-on-Proposition-1 press conference, the campaign to create a parks district in Seattle. (The parks district would authorize the city council to set property taxes to fund city parks, ending the recent history of funding them through voter-approved levies.) Don Harper, cochair of the no-fucking-way-on-Proposition-1 campaign, wanted to get in to see the show. "I was just trying to go through a door," says Harper, who claims Meinert shoved him first. "What did it last—we're talking two seconds, three seconds? Nobody got hurt, nothing happened." Confidential to everyone involved: Take a Xanax. ANNA MINARD

PROP. 1 TO FUND METRO RETURNS Remember Proposition 1 to stave off cuts to Metro bus service, which failed across King County back in April? It's headed back to the ballot this fall in Seattle, thanks to a unanimous vote from the Seattle City Council, and you better damn well vote for it. The new revenue for Metro would come from a regressive (meaning it hits the poor equally as hard as the wealthy) 0.1 percent sales tax hike plus a $60 vehicle license fee. Council Members Kshama Sawant and Nick Licata pushed for an alternate, more progressive funding mechanism designed to hit businesses instead of everybody: a bump in commercial parking taxes and the reinstitution of the employee head tax. Their plan got shot down 6–2 by the council, but in the process, Council Members Tom Rasmussen and Mike O'Brien pledged to support a millionaire's tax and the employee head tax, respectively. "I'll be excited to work with council members [on those measures]," Sawant responded. "Let's fight for something better." ANSEL HERZ

NEW SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT The board of Seattle Public Schools voted unanimously on July 18 to confirm a new interim superintendent, after current chief José Banda up and walked away after only two years. (He got a better offer in Sacramento.) Interim supe Larry Nyland, former superintendent of Marysville schools, seems to have impressed the board, which will have to start a search for a new superintendent soon. Which, unless it's Nyland, will be our seventh schools chief this decade, no joke. ANNA MINARD

SECOND SHOT-UP TARGET LEFT ON CAPITOL HILL Seattle police are investigating a bullet-hole-ridden target sheet found on July 17 tacked to a tree on Madison Street, 10 days after the League of Women Voters found a similar shot-up target sheet on its front door after the July 4 weekend. Police say they have little information on who is posting the targets or their motivation. But League of Women Voters Seattle–King County chapter president Ellen Barton called the target left at their office an "attempt to intimidate us." The league has endorsed Initiative 594, which would close a background check loophole for private gun sales. ANSEL HERZ

DISABLED VETERAN FIGHTS EVICTION In West Seattle, Standing Against Foreclosure and Eviction (SAFE) activists surrounded the home of Byron Barton, a disabled combat veteran of the Vietnam War, and his wife, Jean Barton, who works with a center for the homeless, and put their bodies in the way of deputies from the King County Sheriff's Office, which had arrived to carry out an eviction. The Bartons are challenging the legality of their foreclosure. On Monday, the activists held vigil outside Mayor Murray's office for hours, until he came out and told them he would instruct Seattle police—it's now up to SPD, rather than the sheriff, to enforce a trespassing violation on the Bartons—to hold off "until we've explored all other options," in the words of mayoral spokesperson Megan Coppersmith. "This is a small victory," said SAFE activist Josh Farris. "We punched capitalism in the nuts and we won a battle." ANSEL HERZ

EVERYBODY LOVES O'TOOLE In what is now a standard move, an important figure in Seattle's political arena came out as the World's #1 Fan of new Seattle police chief Kathleen O'Toole last week. Court-appointed monitor Merrick Bobb, charged with overseeing SPD's reform effort, told the Seattle City Council that O'Toole is "a very quick study" and "has a plan and a program" to deal with any stumbling blocks the department faces on its road to reform. In fact, said Bobb, if he had written his report on SPD's progress now, instead of a couple months ago, it would read differently. "To the extent that I expressed pessimism before," he said, mainly regarding SPD's crappy data collection, "my pessimism has eased, and the glass is looking half-full to me." ANNA MINARD

PATTY MURRAY RULES, SENATE REPUBLICANS DROOL After the disheartening, women's-rights-negating Hobby Lobby decision by the US Supreme Court said corporations could exercise religious beliefs and deny employees access to contraception, Washington State senator Patty Murray put her foot down. "Women use birth control for a host of reasons," she said from Oddfellows Cafe in Seattle, "none of which should require a permission slip from their boss." She was there to announce her Not My Boss's Business Act, a simple, great contraception-access bill that Senate Republicans immediately filibustered and blocked, even though it had majority support (56–43). Thank you for trying, Senator Murray, and a hearty fuck you, Republicans. ANNA MINARD recommended