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What are your District 3 priorities?

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(Image: @cmkshama via Twitter)

2015 begins with challenger Rod Hearne entering the ring to battle the formidable Kshama Sawant to represent Capitol Hill and Central Seattle in the first ever district elections for Seattle’s City Council.

To end 2014, we asked CHS readers to vote for the most important stories of the year. While we don’t think any politicians will take a position on the Starbucks roastery, the results might provide some insight into the political priorities for 2015 around Central Seattle. It seems Sawant is probably onto something:

So if you look at this City Hall, the City Council issued bonds so that we could have these palatial spaces for our city workers. And the City’s going to issue a bond so we can spend a billion—not hundreds of millions—a billion on a new waterfront. And of course we’re issuing bonds so we can house the animals at the zoo, and the fish at the aquarium. But what about people? Why can’t the City Council and the Mayor put general fund revenue into building more affordable housing, and making sure that working people, disabled people, and seniors can stay in Seattle? This is totally outrageous.

d3 (1)There’s probably more to the story of the 2015 District 3 race, however. Below, we’ve provided a roster of categories based partly on existing city council committees. Please let us know where your priorities lay. There are some areas of redundancy so feel free to select as many as apply if, say, you have big expectations for both transportation *and* bikes. There are also probably some significant holes so feel free to add an “other” to the mix. You can view results after submitting your vote and we’ll post the results by District 3 neighborhood in a future update.

Survey below.

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14 Comments
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Christine H
Christine H
9 years ago

Funny how the “homeless at Piecora” blog came right before this one; don’t see “problem of homeless” on the graph.

melody
melody
9 years ago

In my opinion, it would be more accurate to use zip codes instead of neighborhood names. The names do not mean the same thing to everyone and can be misleading.

MadronaResident
MadronaResident
9 years ago
Reply to  melody

Not really. I live in Madrona, which is District 3 but a good hike away from Capitol Hill. Yet the zip for much of the CD is 98122– same as parts of Capitol Hill. Zip code boundaries are pretty large and not very specific, neighborhood-wise.

melody
melody
9 years ago

Madrona was not one of you choices. I do not agree that parts of Capitol Hill are in 98122. See what I mean, the names do not mean the same thing to everyone.

Justin
Justin
9 years ago
Reply to  melody

Er, not sure if I’m reading you right, but 98122 is a whole chunk of Capitol Hill, including Cal Anderson Park, Pike/Pine…

melody
melody
9 years ago
Reply to  Justin

The historical definition of the Central District is the area east of central downtown. The north south roads do not have direction designations. The east west roads have East designation. That is 98122. Over time, what people call the Central District has varied. That does not mean we should continue with arbitrary meanings. The original historical definition makes sense and, in my opinion, should be used by all who want to be consistent and have a logical reason for the name.

RWK
RWK
9 years ago

So, Sawant claims that the City is issuing a bond for a billion bucks for our waterfront redevelopment. I’m not sure how accurate this figure is, but at any rate a large chunk of it is to rebuild the seawall, which is for safety reasons and ignoring the problem is not an option. Also, it is my understanding that the financing plan includes setting up a “local improvement district,” whereby the area’s property owners will end up contributing a lot of money to the project.

Does Sawant think that we should just knock down the viaduct, and then do nothing to redevelop our waterfront? The viaduct should never have been built in the first place, because it closes off our city from our beautiful harbor and is an eyesore. There is great potential for an awesome waterfront in our future, if only short-sighted politicians like Sawant don’t get in the way.

Bill
Bill
9 years ago

Bob, I completely agree that the waterfront development is a great idea not only because it will protect the waterfront in a natural disaster (as you mentioned above) but because it will provide generations of Seattlites with a legacy of public access to the sound while simultaneously improving the city’s economy.

What I got from Kshama’s comment is that the city council should recognize that affordable housing is an important investment. Often, politicians define the affordable housing crisis as a private sector issue (limited supply versus demand, a failure of developers to recognize the value of building more workforce housing) and depend heavily on private developers to resolve the problem with small tax incentives and/or relaxed restrictions (i.e. more height for affordable housing, micro-housing). Perhaps we should consider how much money we can prioritize for affordable housing and explore whether a more direct approach to funding affordable housing in Seattle would be better than our current strategy after considering all of the potential financial consequences of direct funding.

RWK
RWK
9 years ago
Reply to  Bill

Thanks, Bill. I too am not optimistic that private developers can be depended upon to voluntarily build a significant amount of affordable housing, except for great nonprofits like Capitol Hill Housing. However, sometimes our current system (of tax incentives etc) works well….one example is the upcoming development over the light rail station, where there will be quite a few affordable units.

A more direct approach would be to have The Seattle Housing Authority build more units for really low income people, or perhaps a voucher system (similar to the federal Section 8) for use at private apartments…..but these possibilities would be very expensive, and I doubt that money could be found for them.

MadronaResident
MadronaResident
9 years ago

Madrona is part of the greater Central District. I’m sorry you don’t agree but as Justin says, plenty of Capitol Hill is in 98122. When I moved from CapHill to Madrona my zip code did not change. Denny Way forms a N/S dividing line for 98122 zip code in parts of CH, with areas to the South of it falling in 98122.

CD resident
CD resident
9 years ago

This is the most pandering photo I have seen to date of kshwama my guess is that she has no idea that she is wearing a seahawks jersey or knows who Kearse is, she probably thinks someone created these shirts to support a $15 minimum wage

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[…] the Hearne announcement, CHS asked readers for their priorities for District 3. You’ll note we lumped Portage Bay into “Elsewhere in District 3″ in the survey. […]

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[…] rents and displacement becoming the number one issue in Seattle,” he told us. In a CHS survey on City Council District 3 priorities posted in January, respondents identified “affordability” as their number one issue for […]

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[…] ideas? The bar chart on this post shows CHS responses to our District 3 priorities survey from earlier this […]