Biking

On Wednesday, April 4, the Seattle Department of Transportation planned to release the city's 10-year Bike Master Plan, a set of projects that will expand Seattle's bike system massively over the next 10 years. The Master Plan would extend bike lanes or other bike facilities to 62 percent of Seattle's roads, or 295 miles; create a 23-mile system of bike routes; and create 19 more miles of separate bike trails, including the "missing link" of the Burke-Gilman Trail through Ballard. The total cost: $240 million. ERICA C. BARNETT

Auditing

The city's Special Events Committee, which considers about 250 applications for events on public property every year, is being audited. The SEC has drawn attention in recent years after event organizers filed lawsuits against the city accusing the committee of denying or delaying permits for political events while issuing permits for non-political events in a timely manner. Last summer, for example, less than a month before their annual event, Hempfest sued the city for failing to issue a permit that would accommodate traffic through construction of SAM's Olympic Sculpture Park to the event's annual venue, Myrtle Edwards Park, despite a city code that required SAM to provide access along the waterfront.

City Auditor Susan Cohen, who gave the green light for the investigation, says the audit will seek to determine if "what happened [with Hempfest was] the perfect storm or if there are a lot of problems like that with special-events permitting."

SEC chair Virginia Swanson says that while "everyone isn't always going to agree with the committee... we don't say 'no' very often." DOMINIC HOLDEN

Clubbing

Legislation extending the deadline for nightclubs to install expensive sprinkler systems easily passed the state senate's Ways and Means Committee on Monday—a good sign for the legislation's eventual prospects. The new law would push the current December 2007 deadline for installing sprinklers back to December 2009, giving clubs two more years to install the systems. Club owners say they need extra time because only a handful of contractors do sprinkler installations, and because they need time to negotiate with landlords over who will pay for the systems. Legislators stripped a tax break from the bill that would have provided relief to businesses that install sprinkler systems, a blow Tim Hatley, a nightclub lobbyist, said he had expected. Sprinkler systems can cost anywhere from several thousand dollars for the simplest installations to $70,000 or more for large venues like the Showbox. ERICA C. BARNETT