Governor Inslee Says Teachers Should Get a $5,000 Raise: Why? To raise retention rates and address a statewide shortage of teachers. How? By closing four tax exemptions, raising $100 million. "The governor announced the proposal Thursday during the unveiling of his supplemental budget proposal," the AP reports, "which seeks to put more money toward covering wildfire costs and into the state's mental health system."
Layoffs Are Coming to the Seattle Times Newsroom Before Year's End: "We don’t have a choice if we want The Seattle Times to continue," says top editor Kathy Best in an e-mail to staff.
Bruce Harrell Is the New City Council President: And he's assigned all other eight council members their committee leadership posts, each one focused on different issues, Heidi reports. Tim Burgess is in charge of affordable housing.
Community Will Get the Chance to Save KPLU: In an e-mail, UW President Ana Marie Cauce said explained how she reached the decision to open up the bidding process to buy the station to community supporters of KPLU. "They deserve that chance," she said. The deadline is January 15, KPLU reports.
Mayor Ed Murray Tells the State He Doesn't Want Ride the Ducks Operating in Seattle: The AP reports: "The request comes after regulators investigating the company due to a deadly crash on a Seattle bridge said they identified 442 violations in an overall review of operations. Ride the Ducks was shut down after one of its amphibious vehicles collided with a bus Sept. 24. The crash killed five North Seattle College international students."
There Was a Shootout in the Central District on Wednesday: "I heard a loud pow-pow-pow and thought, geez, those are some loud fireworks," said a bystander near Cherry Street and 29th Street quoted by CHS Seattle. "Then I heard loud ping-ping-ping from the lamp post next to me, and I realized that those were bullets, a few feet from head... One of the cops had an enormous black gun, like something out of a future war film. It genuinely frightened me."
Bertha Malfunctions Again, But It's an Easy Fix: "A soil-mixing arm broke inside tunnel-boring machine Bertha during pre-startup tests on Wednesday," Mike Lindblom reports for the Seattle Times, "but workers fixed it by Thursday afternoon." The goal for project managers is to restart the drill by Monday.
Veteran's Eastern Washington Host Speaks Out Against FBI Raid: The homeowner tells KING 5 that FBI agents "terrorized us" when they descended on his property to apprehend a veteran who they accused of planning some kind of bombing. "They found absolutely nothing. It doesn't make sense to me," he said.
This Week on Blabbermouth, Our Week-In-Review Podcast: Mayor Ed Murray looks back at 2015, Charles Mudede on the new Star Wars movie, and music editor Sean Nelson on the best music of the past year. Listen here.
Soccer Fans, Rejoice! Lionel Messi Is Coming to Seattle! He'll be playing with the Argentina national team on June 16 at CenturyLink Stadium! This guy: