It didn't take a break-in to convince me that Pioneer Square is undergoing a wave of nuisance crimes. On my way to a meeting of the Pioneer Square Community Association's public-safety committee, I saw one man smoking crack and another pissing into a trash can; on my way out, I discovered that the bracket for my bike lock (retail value: $3.50) had been ripped off my handlebars.
In between, a dozen neighborhood workers and residents delivered a litany of complaints familiar to anyone who's lived in a neighborhood, like Pioneer Square, that straddles the line between early-stage grit and late-stage gentrification: open-air drug markets, aggressive harassment, and cops who tell female workers to "stay inside." In lieu of a larger police presence in the area, the PSCA is turning to a tool used successfully at Pike Place Market: a so-called "admonishment system," which would allow private security hired by the association to ban people who break the law from Pioneer Square. Although some city hall observers think the radical proposal (which PSCA member Katie Comer notes is still in the "thought stage") sounds patently unconstitutional, supporters on the PSCA note that it held up at the Market, giving them hope that it will pass legal muster in the much larger neighborhood. "Our thinking is they did it because they're a historical area, and so can we," Comer says. She adds: "We're so desperate that this is the point we're at."
After years of pushing for prevention and intervention funding, council president Nick Licata finally got his wayâ43 percent of this year's increase in public-safety funding will go to programs like crime-prevention training, domestic-violence legal assistance, and "civilian assistance to patrol" (nĂŠe CSOs), with the remaining 57 percent paying for 30 new cops. The dramatic philosophical shift was embraced by other council members, but not by the police guild, which blasted the council for failing to produce the 250 new officers Peter Steinbrueck had wanted. "My answer [to the guild] is, that's 30 more officers than we would have had under the mayor's budget," Steinbrueck says. Steinbrueck also passed a resolution directing the mayor to come up with accountability measures for police, something Steinbrueck calls "the most important aspect" of the package. The resolution, however, is nonbinding; it remains up to the mayor whether to comply with the council's direction or ignore it completely.
Last week, new questions about revenue assumptions for the proposed Woodland Park Zoo parking garage prompted Licata to request a closer look into the zoo's financial assumptions, including attendance forecasts, revenue projections, and (ominously to some) "the potential financial implications for the city of reassuming responsibility for the ongoing management and operation" of the zoo. The council, on a 5â3 vote (with David Della abstaining), rejected the move, on the grounds that asking for more information now, in the words of Tom Rasmussen, "sends a really bad message that you can never be sure you've really made a deal" with the council. But Licata says that all he wanted was to "see if something had really gone south"; as it is, he says, "We're just proceeding blindly."
The $18 million garage proposal, a contentious issue ever since it was introduced in 2002, has never quite justified its own existence. The presence of plenty of free on-street parking around the zoo, combined with neighbors' reluctance to make that parking residents-only, has made many council members and residents doubt the zoo's claim that it needs the extra 710 parking spaces the garage would provide. As Irene Wall, a longtime garage opponent, points out, "The zoo has over a million visitors a week and they all manage to park without a garage." 
