• As KIRO's Brandi Kruse first reported last week, Seattle city attorney Pete Holmes, who is backing Ed Murray's run for mayor, reportedly refused to show up at an August 27 press conference about cracking down on drunk driving because he refused to stand near the mayor. When called for comment, spokespeople on both sides weren't forthcoming about what went down, exactly. "Sean and I canceled it because we weren't ready," city attorney spokeswoman Kimberly Mills said about SPD spokesman Sean Whitcomb (she didn't respond to an e-mail asking if she denied Kruse's story). For his part, Whitcomb would only say, "It had too many moving parts, and how you interpret that is up to you." Here's one interpretation: Holmes is acting like a child.
• Dreams of an endless summer for thousands of schoolchildren were burst over Labor Day weekend, when the Seattle School District and its teachers union reached a tentative contract agreement just days before the start of the new school year. Teachers will get a modest raise, and class sizes and workday length will remain unchanged under the compromise agreement. School board president Kay Smith-Blum says she would have liked to have given in to more of the teachers' demands, if she could have found the money to pay for it all. "We stink," says Smith-Blum about our state's woeful underfunding of K–12 education.
• On August 30, a group called the Graffiti Defense Coalition asked the city for a 30-day extension to claim a $49,251 grant to fund several murals on Capitol Hill buildings. The grant has been in limbo since last November, when GDC began warring with its one-time collaborator, the nonprofit group the World Is Fun (both groups claim ownership of the name Stunning Seattle, and TWIF has reportedly threatened litigation if GDC uses the name for its mural project). GDC leader Justin Hart wrote an open letter to TWIF last week, asking that the organization state in writing that "no legal action will be taken" against GDC or the city for use of the name. Hart has received no response.
• The Seattle Times has a cool map of the August 6 primary election results, showing the precincts in which the contenders came out on top. In short: Ed Murray prevailed in more traditionally conservative or wealthier parts of town (Magnolia, Queen Anne, Blue Ridge, Laurelhurst, Broadmoor, North Capitol Hill) and in West Seattle (which loved the same deep-bore tunnel that Mayor Mike McGinn opposed). Meanwhile, McGinn prevailed in more diverse, staunchly liberal, or working-class parts of town (Central District, South Capitol Hill, Aurora corridor, Wallingford). 
