Fixing potholes doesn’t just benefit motorists. As a long time bicyclist on Seattle streets (in both north and south Seattle), I can identify many of these potholes season after season, as if they were landmarks.

Wow, Hannah. Your grapes are so very sour.

As a cyclist, I'm in favor of "repaved roads, filled potholes, and repaired bridges." Am I doing it wrong?

I hope they "analyze every dollar spent" on vacant police positions, and then stop spending those dollars. But something tells me that won't be one of the new regime's "revised budgeting practices"

As a daily transit rider, I'm also in favor of filling potholes and re-paving streets. With the suspensions shot on Metro's aging fleet, a trip into downtown is sure to shake loose your fillings.

As a daily transit rider, I'm in favor of fixing potholes, but stop wasting my tax $ on cop positions you're never going to fill.

Austerity is always a failed policy.

So now according to Hannah not supporting new revenue is bad, when before it was good.

https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/12/01/78749515/council-votes-to-take-more-money-from-you-but-not-amazon

Hannah, maybe you could make up your mind?

Hannah and the Stranger have long taken the position that it's better to promise everything and deliver nothing (as did former CMs Gonzalez, Herbold, and Sawant) than it is to plan to do what you can with what you have.

As far as effective city budgetary practices go, I'd like to see the Stranger comment on the approaching $1B Seattle has spent on homelessness services since then-Mayor Murray declared a "Homelessness Crisis." (As Real Change is both Hannah's former employer and a long-term recipient of some of those government dollars, I have a pretty solid idea of what she might say on that topic.)

@8 As far as effective city budget practices go, since the date you reference the city has spent ~$3B on police, but as you love to remind everyone crime here is out of control. Speaking of delivering nothing.

@9
Crime's outta
Control EVERYWHERE!
we haven't enough Guns quite Yet

plus
getting
Defunded
broke the Po-
po's Will, thirteen12

it's a Wonder
Any of 'em can
even get Outta bed
specially the one making
$315,000 per annum. go figure!

@9: You might want to read those “System Failure” reports again. The police diligently referred cases to City Attorney Pete Holmes for years, without his taking action on most of them.

(SPD generally does not deserve sympathy, so please stop trying to manufacture it, by victim-blaming them.)

@11 only one index crime (Larceny-Theft)--and none in the Violent category--potentially includes misdemeanors, so whatever Holmes was doing has very little to do with the reported crime rate

@13: Yeah, persistently ignoring misdemeanor assault and thefts did nothing to encourage the unpunished criminals to try bigger crimes.

Not big on understanding human behavior, eh?

@14 wait are you saying you think there are gateway crimes? That's like broken windows ad absurdum. And you suggest I don't understand human behavior. I'm dead

Bruce Harrell is a bad mayor, the new city council is an embarrassment, and most of the blame goes on self-identified liberal voters who decided to vote for reactionary politics.

@15: I wrote nothing about "gateway crimes" or "broken windows." I merely noted criminals whose behaviors go uncorrected may escalate to more serious crimes.

For example, the original "System Failure" report profiled Travis Berge, whose long criminal career never resulted in any meaningful intervention. Sometime after the report was published, Berge committed felony assault against Lisa Vach, his tentmate girlfriend, and publicly bragged about it; when even all that did not get him detained, he beat her to death. Immediately after killing her, he died during police pursuit.

Had Seattle intervened correctly during any of his many prior transgressions, both Berge and Vach might still be alive.