Comments

1
Gee,all of them are racially "White" Upper Middle Class and over a certain Gregorian year of age;doesn't seem to be a microcosm of the Seattle demographic by a looooon shot!(Pfft!).Hey!SECB!Are you gonna report on the King County Council seat elections?And the fact that the Socialist Alternative Party plans to front candidates for ALL of Seattle's city-council seats up for grabs next year?Or will you kiss the ass of the NIMBY Nazis who run the Overpriced City ??? ------ http://socialistalternative.org
2
What we DON'T need to hear is mayoral take-over of our school district (I'm looking at YOU, Burgess). Unless you want to turn Seattle into the Rahm-credible basket case in Chicago. Seriously!
3
re: Seattle Subway. Sound Transit promised light rail in Seattle (Seatac to UW) by 2006. Now the date is 2016. What makes you think it could build out a subway in your lifetime? Are you fags getting paid to flog for ST?
4
Density: All your f-bombs won't change the fact that Seattle does "give it away for nothing." Repeatedly. For decades. South Lake Union is no exception and the proposal handed by McGinn to the Council is a larger give away than most. It is not inherently NIMBY or anti-density to advocate for more accountability in land use planning (planning? what planning?) and decision making, and for the City to stop giving away public resources.

Zoning capacity is a public resource, and up zones have consequences, like the need for more transit (and open space, and police, fire dpt, etc.). And yes, blocking views and light is an adverse impact. (As is the suburban ugliness of most of the new buildings going up in SLU.) The fact is, Seattle has lots of unused housing and commercial and industrial capacity without a single rezone. Why don't you cover that issue (GMA, growth targets, unused capacity, who owns what and gets what from specific decisions) instead of uncritically flogging for density?

Arena: Same story; Seattle gives away public resources and conducts the environmental review, if ever, after the fact. There is pending litigation over this ass-backwards process by the City. If Hansen doesn't want a public siting review process under SEPA, he shouldn't ask for public assets. It's quite possible Seattle will get away with this travesty because they have done so numerous times as SEPA and GMA is eroded into meaningless by developers and their municipal handmaidens.

The Stranger should not go along with such uncritical decision making; you argue for more accountability in most areas, but when it comes to your god density, no decision is wrong no matter how poor and non-transparent the process, or how many impacts have not been evaluated, let alone mitigated.
5
The 3% we spend on bikes is equivalent to the 3% of people who commute by bicycles. The percentage we spend on sidewalks is a fraction of the percentage of people who are pedestrians. Want to make transit carry more people? Build sidewalks so people don't have to walk in the middle of the street or stand in a drainage ditch to catch the bus.
6
I'd rather prefer a mayor tell the NBA that if they want an arena in Seattle we have one that needs some work or they're welcome to pay the cost to play in our desireable market, without Seattle fronting projected tax revenues to the project (or property taxes that are paid by citizens being used to pay bonds on the arena).
7
ChefJoe

The city already has an arena deal. No Mayorial candidate alone is going to undo it.

Go back to Field of Schemes and bitch about Virginia Beach some more.
8
The city has an arena MOU, pending some studies and another round of votes on those results. On top of that, there's no bonds being created until Hansen finds a team and gets them to sign a lease that all parties are happy with.

I could care less about them, but Virginia Beach's arena money-backers are sitting down and talking with NBA teams so they've got that leg up.
9
Complain about the cops but then advocate for putting more of them on the street?!?!?
10
I believe in density. But I believe it can be balanced by controlling height. Views are important to all of us. The over-building of a city affects how people behave within the confines of that concrete jungle. Also, they find something like 300 dead birds a day in NY. We can do better than that. A good starting place is smaller apartments rather than taller buildings.
11
A bit off-topic but . . . why doesn't that coal train leave Montana and go north to Canada giving them the opportunity for a brand new coal-dust paradise to the coast? Why the route through Washington?
12
Bikes: I'm for bike lanes. But, does anyone else have trouble seeing the damn things at 6:30 pm on a rainy, windy night as they approach a busy intersection with their one teeny tiny Christmas light? Crazy idea: add the bike lanes in the center of the street where drivers can easily see them and create an ordinance that all riders must be wearing a reflective garment.

I've thought a lot about this and placing bikes on inside lanes down the center of the road would work. Yes, there would have to be right-turn bike crossways but that could be worked out. Think about it before tossing it as just another crazy idea. I've thought of many anti-arguments myself but I've worked out a solution for each one. We need creative thinking in transportation.
13
I see that the "progressive" Stranger is on its knees sucking developers' dicks again. Hey, why don't we just rename this city "Allentown," and fill in Lake Union? Then the "progressives" would be happy. What a bunch of greedy, corrupt phonies you people are.
14
And of course the arena. The "progressives" do a lot of blah blah about the downtrodden, but who did they just give $350 million to? A California billionaire and his bondholders. If you want to know what someone really believes in, watch where they spend money. In this case, as in so many others, it's not even their money.
15
#12, how about telling bicyclists that, as authorized road users, they will have to pay road use fees like every other class of road users? Motors scooters pay $85 a year. So should bikes. Time to end the free ride.
16
More lame blanket statements.

Or not.
17
What, obstruct the coal trains? NIMBY!
18
Typical, naive bullshit opinions from The Stranger.

When it comes to opining about zoning, how to develop, and what a city is REALLY like, the last place to go to is bunch of uninformed self-important white kids from Seattle...
19
Bikes are low maintenance when it comes to roads. Also, they keep cars off the road. Imagine even bigger traffic jams at rush hour. You might try to develop your imagination and enter the twenty-first century where fossil fuels are low tech and climate change is upon us. Your posts sound like those of another old angry white guy who is trying to match the juvenile language word for word from those of a trying-too-hard-to-be-so-not-pc SECB.
20
The Stranger like the fucking aPodments?!?!? ARe you fucking kidding me?
21
#20, they looooooove the apodments. Seattle's "progressives" are and always will be developer whores.
22
Social justice? I know we have equal justice in our constitution but what's this social stuff?
23
@9 More cops walking a beat means more personal relationships, personal investment by both cops and folks in that neighborhood in their mutual relationship, and therefore less abuse and mistrust. You don't beat the shit out of a stranger as readily if you know you'll see that person's cousin at work the next day.

Anyway: my vote is going to the candidate who can convince me that they are going to make the most sustained changes to the police department.
24
northender @10: I believe in density. But I believe it can be balanced by controlling height.

Sounds like, when push comes to shove, no, you don't believe in density. But sure, good luck creating a market for smaller apartments without taller buildings.

SECB on Seattle subway: Use the corridors already identified in the city's Transit Master Plan, and then pay Sound Transit to build the thing. (We don't have to "go it alone" or create a new transit agency to do this.)

No, that is going it alone. And how much faster would that move things anyway? Last I checked, there's still the possibility of Sound Transit 3 going to the ballot in 2016, and Sound Transit is going to need a big, capital-intensive project (i.e. Seattle subway) to balance out the suburban rail projects it's considering. And I recall from reading Seattle Transit Blog, from which Seattle Subway emerged, that their focus has been on ST3.
25
I agree with most of the above, particularly regarding the police department and public safety.

However, electing councilmembers by geographical district is a terrible idea, and I refuse to vote for any candidate who supports it.

I hold this position for two reasons.

First, geographical districts can be gerrymandered. Even in the absence of malice, you have to break up the districts somewhere. People on one side of Broadway may have a different representative than people on the other side. Is that a good way to make sure that Capitol Hill's interests are heard? Or is that a good way to promote artificial divisions?

Second, and much more importantly, our city faces many problems which simply can't be solved parochially. For example, every neighborhood has an interest in promoting development... somewhere else. The costs of development are very targeted, while the benefits (though greater) are much more diffuse. With an at-large council, you can make deals, where development is allowed in one part of the city in exchange for restrictions somewhere else. But when members are elected by district, each member vows to vote against any development in their district, meaning that nothing gets built anywhere.

There's a much better way to ensure that diverse interests get heard, which is proportional representation. Candidates run as 9-member ranked slates, rather than individually. If Slate A gets 66% of the vote and Slate B gets 33%, then the first six A candidates and the first three B candidates get elected. This system maximizes the chance that each resident will get to be represented by someone they voted for, which is a much more laudable goal than allowing residents to be represented by someone who shares their ZIP code.
26
If we had light rail everywhere, 3rd and Pine could be sprayed by AK-47 shots hourly and I wouldn't care.
27
Many of you should maybe take this conversation outside. you could sit down out on the sidewalk, eat a Seattle dog. You'll see cops...wait, no, you'll see parking enforcement officers. And if you wait a minute you'll watch meth/crack deals go down in the doorways of very expensive apartment towers.
all sarcasm aside, I love living here and the issues are not easy, I guess for my vote this thread would be more like an actual conversation on the streets of Seattle if every other post in it was from someone else asking for money.
hey, can I get a dollar?
28
This list of complaints is proof positive that The Stranger is so far to the left, that it shits carbon credits. Half of these things are wishful thinking ideas that cost ALOT of money to accomplish, money that nobody wants to pay for.
29
You will get bike lanes when I get sidewalks.
If you really want city council by district, and claim to be Seattle's Only Newspaper then get your asses out of Pike/Pine and recognize that the "shitty" bus service doesn't magically start in the suburbs, but as soon as you get walking distance away from downtown or the hill or Udub.

Want to build a bunch of cheap apartments in "Seattle", great, there is a bunch of property in north Seattle that is much less expensive because it doesn't have a view of SLU, the problem is the lack of sidewalks and the shitty bus service, we get told and taxed as if we live in "Seattle" but that's about it.

If you density transit urbanists were serious the you would look at where the cars in Seattle sleep at night (per capita), overlay the shitty bus service map, and have a fucking epiphany.
The only people that need rail are the people that already have sidewalks and busses.
Take a look at the Streets for All failed electoral map of Seattle, pull you heads out of you asses, and promote a comprehensive multimodal set of real solutions for all of Seattls, and not just bikes and rails. Seriously.

Next time you think about Nirthgate realize that there is 40 more city blocks further north that us the city of Seattle, too, 40 fucking blocks.
30
what's the history of public universal tutoring programs like?

It seems that with the huge problems of un(derrr)employment and student underachievement, as well as the strong tradition of tutoring in improving academic performance, a massive hiring of enough workers who pass simple standardized tests (since that's the measure for students nowadays) for 20 hours a week at 12-14 bucks an hour or w/e to give each public high school student 2 hours of weekly tutoring might be inexpensive relative to common school expenditures. is this true?

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