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The August primary is still weeks off but the last dedicated District 3 candidates forum of the pre-primary season was held June 10th. Rather than fill another stuffy auditorium, CHS is going to try to take another route toward political enlightenment and a deeper understanding of the candidates in line to lead the district covering Capitol Hill, the Central District, and that big orange chunk of Central Seattle.
Here’s the plan. CHS will work with readers to compile a 15-question District 3 candidate survey in time to get responses back and published before ballots hit the mail in July.
We’re hoping to make this survey an efficient, simple way for the candidates to communicate direct answers on questions of interest to our readers. Some candidates may also choose to engage more fully in the comments. Some candidates may not reply. We suggest you not vote for those candidates. Unless our questions turn out really, really bad.
Questions will be suggested by CHS readers, selected by CHS editors, and finalized by an online vote before we provide the survey to the campaigns. Candidates are welcome to answer as much or as little of the survey as they wish but unanswered questions will be noted. Answers may be a mix of yes/no and 150 word or less “essay” responses. Answers can be a picture. Answers can be a song.
The first step in this bold experiment in democracy begins now. Please suggest your questions in the CHS comments below by Friday, June 24th noon. Feel free to pile on to the best or suggest refinements. We’ll grab a selection of the most interesting — and most popular — and do some editing before posting a roster for an open vote here on the site. We suggest you find a way to pose your proposed questions in a Twitter-friendly 140 characters or less — because if you don’t, we probably will. You can check character count here, if you need.
Need ideas? The bar chart on this post shows CHS responses to our District 3 priorities survey from earlier this year.
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An I5 lid would improve our city in many ways- decrease noise, increase green space. Can we count on your active support to make an I5 lid happen?
I fully agree about the I-5 lid. Though it may take many years to be fully implemented, I think it makes sense to put it on our agenda now and keep advocating for it over time. I-5 is noisy, dirty, unsightly and creates a physical and psychological barrier between Capitol Hill and the CBD. It also prevents people in the CBD (e.g. tourists, convention attendees, etc.) from wandering up Capitol Hill to support our restaurants and shops. This won’t happen unless we push for it. Let’s make it part of our long term plan.
Agreed. Adding a lid over I-5 should be a required public benefit for building the $1.4 billion wall (aka the Convention Center expansion) between Capitol Hill and downtown.
How will you take to foster trust between the SPD and the community? Will you hold the SPD accountable and ensure that racist cops are fired instead of receiving a paid slap on the wrist?
How will you foster trust* (I realize that is probably a loaded question, and yes obviously referencing Cythina Whitlatch and others here)
Morale at the East Precinct is at an all time low and crime is at an all time high on Capitol Hill. It looks like the zombie apocolapse out there. An officer recently told me that he would never live on Capitol Hill or in Seattle for that matter because he wouldn’t put up with this kind of crap in his front yard. Then why is he putting up with it in ours? He said that status quo on Capitol Hill is what the neighborhood and city want. I got the sense he despised Capitol Hill and the people that live here. He said to call the Council and the Mayor if we wanted the situation to change. What leadership will you provide on Council to address the crime issues in the neighborhood and fix the morale issue at the SPD?
In lieu of bemoaning change / newcomers, give three examples of how you will integrate newcomers to D3’s cultural & physical neighborhoods.
Good lord, man/woman, why would you want this job?
1) What specific steps will you take to make our streets safer at night? What plans have you thought through leading up to your possible election?
2) What are your plans to curb the over-serving/vomitorium-like environment that pike/pine has become every thursday, friday and saturday (and sometimes sunday)?
3) How will you capture and respond to (in a timely manner) the challenges, complaints, issues of the citizens in your district?
those are just off the top of my head but will add more as i think of them.
Follow up on the vomitorium question: would you support building a warehouse on the outskirts of town, “far away from residential homes and streets, far away from normal people trying to have fun,” and making this the only legal place in the Seattle area for douche-bros and woo-girls to “party”? We could have a bus stop outside das Rheinhaus to pick them up until they figure out that they don’t really even have to come here at all again, ever.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/24/stag-hen-dos-york-anti-social-behaviour
Great idea! Let’s take some lessons from Disneyland–create a “Pike/Pine Streets Experience”– a controlled environment that looks like the real thing, a la Main Street USA. The weekend partiers will get on PeopleMovers™ that will transport them through an underground tunnel to the offsite warehouse containing the attraction. They’ll be just as happy as being in the real thing.
Seattle has more homeless people than any city except New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas and the fastest growth rate in homelessness of any major city. It is particularly acute on Capitol Hill given the city’s practice of pushing homeless people out of the downtown business district and convention center vicinity up to Capitol Hill. It has been further exacerbated by the more recent policy of moving homeless encampments out of the I-5 right-of-way. Once they are in the neighborhood, they are swept out of the Pike Pine business district into Cal Anderson Park. The Seattle Police Department acknowledge that this is an unwritten policy. Currently dozens of mentally ill individuals, drug addicts, and hobo youth traveling the west coast circuit (summer in Seattle, winter in California) are camping there for weeks on end. This situation is a total failure of public policy on every level. What is your plan for getting homeless people off the streets, out of the parks and into housing and treatment programs? How is your plan different from the failed policies of your predecessors?
How many miles a week do you log traveling through our neighborhood in something other than a car? Bus, bike, foot, skateboard, whatever all count. If you spend all your time in a closed vehicle traveling between your nice home and your nice office, you are not exposed to many of the issues other folks are mentioning here, such as noise and pollution levels from I-5, interactions with the homeless and mentally ill, problems with idiots driving drunk out of our neighborhood, poor transit options, etc..
So I want to know, do you only experience our neighborhood from your sanitized, middle-class viewpoint (except when you are out for a photo-op), or do you know what it is actually like on our streets?
Will you spend valuable time on a soapbox talking about issues unrelated to city management?
How will you promote an inclusive neighborhood and what steps will you take to end LGBT hate crimes in capitol hill?
The East Precinct , serving the District 3 community has been understaffed fro years. This is acknowledged by the City and SPD. As District 3, specifically Capitol Hill, grows in density we are increasingly faced with downtown crime level w/out downtown level resources. Will you, as a District 3 candidate, commit to supporting the hiring of more officers in the East Precinct and pledge to advocate for more resources of all sorts (including expansion of the LEED program) to address crime in our neighborhoods?
I agree. We need more officers on foot patrol including officers that are assigned to keep Cal Anderson Park a safe space for the community to enjoy.
Many of the character buildings on Capitol Hill are being facadimized and replaced with block-sized, generic buildings constructed of cheap materials. Capitol Hill is beginning to look like a movie set of false storefronts. The historic preservation incentives negotiated by PPUNC, the developers, and the council are a huge failure. What changes would you make to the development regulations to protect the character and culture of the neighborhood and its historic auto row era buildings and brownstones as density is added?
The pike pine neighborhood has been designated as an Arts District. 12th Ave Arts was a positive step, but it still feels like the arts community on Capitol Hill is being displaced. What is the next 12th Ave Arts? What steps would you take as a council member to make Capitol Hill a thriving arts district is reality not just name?
A neighborhood needs more than density to be a thriving urban center. What are the elements that make a dense, urban neighborhood successful? What specific measures would you champion as a council member to make Capitol Hill a model urban neighborhood?
Capitol Hill is dirty as fuck after bro and woo girl party mountain weekends. Why don’t we have street cleaning and adequate garbage pick up like other cities? What specific measures would you take to keep Capitol Hill clean?
Capitol Hill is losing families, queer culture, ethnic diversity, age diversity, and socioeconomic diversity. What specific measures would you take as a council member to keep and improve diversity and make Capitol Hill a welcoming place for all?