There's no such thing as "a Ballard City Council race." District 6 of the Seattle City Council includes Ballard, and the race to replace the retiring Seattle City Council Member in District 6, Mike O'Brien, is the race to which Eli Sanders' post refers.

I vote for the substitute teacher as the temp councilmember. Appropriate skill set, seriously.

@2: you don't get a vote in this one.

@1: Given its high sex out of wedlock and masturbation rates, Ballard really should be its own city.

The election should be settled by lottery.

Every homeless person encamped within the city limits shall be considered. Their names will be placed in a hat, and the lucky winner drawn at random.

This person shall be notified by SPD, who will then escort them to the Council Chambers where they may take their seat.

This of course is contingent upon the winner providing their name and trusting the SPD enough to take the ride to City Hall. Both will serve as tests of how effective Mayor Durkan has been in winning the trust of anyone other than real estate speculators.

Before you dismiss this idea, consider this: thus far, the only people we have asked their opinions on how to solve homelessness in the City have no direct knowledge of homelessness. And the result has been rather predictable: it has been 34 years since the release of the documentary Streetwise, and yet the problem has only gotten worse. It is difficult to imagine any other policy pursued for three and a half decades met with only failure that would be continued. Don't you think its time for a fresh perspective?

Ahh now, I hear the stereotypes trotted out already. Won't such a person be mentally ill or addicted to drugs? Perhaps, but you can hardly look at Durkan's predecessor and the manner in which his administration collapsed without entertaining the notion that at least a few of our civic leaders have already been mentally ill. As for drug addiction, I need only point to Presidents from Grant to Nixon and arrive at a similar conclusion.

As a closing argument, I quote the greatest political mind of the prior century: "Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

QED

Raindrop dear, I am flummoxed: On the one hand, I want to ask you what ass you pulled that Ballard "statistic" out of, but I am also trying to imagine the connection between "sex out of wedlock" and masturbation, and how that would justify Ballard being its own city.

^,

It establishes Ballard as an up and cumming neighborhood