• Tuesday 11/17/09, 6PM at Miller Community Center: Join former Mayor Norm Rice for the kick-off of a major update to Seattle’s Comprehensive Plan “Seattle 2030 and Beyond”. 6 – 8 PM, presentation at 6:30. Mayor Rice introduced the “urban village” idea to Seattle, back in the 90’s.
• Most of you sensibly avoided going out last Tuesday to the “Neighborhood Plan Status Check” presentation. After an introduction by Sally Clark, the 30 or so of us Queen Anne/Belltown/Pike-Pine/First Hill/Eastlake/Cap Hill/Centralites were treated to a brief Powerpoint presentation, and then broke into our separate areas (I attended the Central Area one). We discussed minutae, voted on priorities via sticky dots, then decided we couldn’t even read the accursed neighborhood planning matrix in the time available, let alone comment sensibly on it.
• YOU can achieve much more, from the comfort of your couch, by reading the summaries of discussions and answers to questionnaires for the Capitol Hill area (attached here, more at Planning Commission site) and then answering yet another questionnaire (see overview here). Central Area info at CD news. Contact me for Pike-Pine, First Hill or Eastlake info or look on Planning Commission report (page 7)
• Sorry, Neighborhood Planning is NOT going away. Today’s City Council press release on the budget (“City Council rolls out major budget highlights”) notes the following: 

Planning for a strong future included not losing focus on the importance of strong neighborhoods and restoring needed funds benefiting neighborhoods.

“Preserving neighborhood planning and historic preservation programs are two of the ways that this budget sets the table for economic recovery,” said Councilmember Sally J. Clark. As the recession ends we’ll be better poised to make stronger communities in our built environment.”