Tag Archives: city hall

Council considers two Metro funding plans, both include sending $60 car tab to ballot

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In an effort to buy back $45 million in Metro bus services, the Seattle City Council will be considering two competing plans on Thursday. Both would include sending a $60 vehicle licensing fee to the ballot in November.

The first plan, proposed by Mayor Ed Murray in May, is basically a local version of Proposition 1 which Eastside and rural King County voters torpedoed in April. The plan would raise sales taxes by .1% and add a $60 vehicle licensing fee in Seattle — a plan that would likely win voter approval in November. Continue reading →

New head of SDOT a ‘bike-friendly’ leader

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The city’s pick to head the Seattle Department of Transportation — on the left, above — is a bike-friendly dude.

Here’s what Seattle Bike Blog has to say about the appointment of Scott Kubly as SDOT chief:

“Scott is the visionary who will give transportation in Seattle the leadership it needs,” Mayor Ed Murray said during a press event introducing Kubly Wednesday. If confirmed by the City Council, Kubly will be the first permanent SDOT Director since Peter Hahn was swept out with the McGinn administration. Goran Sparrman has served as the Interim Director.

Kubly said Seattle’s challenge is to give people more options so people can continue to get around during a period of significant growth.

“We’ll give people choices, very attractive choices,” Kubly said at the press event. “People will chose to walk, bike and take transit because it is the most attractive to them.”

Kubly is clearly proud of the bike projects he has helped make happen, including a major role in launching Divvy in Chicago and expanding DC’s Capital Bikeshare. He also talked about creating protected bike lanes “for Seattleites 8-80″ years old.

“Scott is a transportation visionary,” said Mayor Ed Murray in a statement on the appointment. “He has a proven track record in Chicago and Washington, D.C. of advancing innovative solutions that address the full range of transportation needs of residents and businesses. He’s also a transportation renaissance man who’s virtually done it all: he’s worked on bikes issues, car share programs, traffic management and pedestrian safety strategies, rapid transit and street cars; he’s done long-range budgeting, strategic planning, cost reduction, major capital project development, and performance measurement and accountability. Scott is the transportation leader this city needs to take us to the next level in creating more livable, walking communities.”

Following the expected confirmation by the City Council, Kubly will earn an annual salary of $180,000. He is tasked with leading a department and planning process responsible for 750 employees and an annual operating budget of more than $400 million — in a city with the fourth worst traffic in the nation.

City Hall grapples with how to pay for downtown streetcar linking First Hill and SLU lines

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The City Council put planning for one new transit project on temporary hold Monday and decided to quash a plan for public campaign financing in Seattle. Details on the vote — and non-vote — below.

Streetcar link-up
By 2018 Seattle’s street car system should be capable of shuttling riders from 10th and E Roy down to Pioneer Square, past Pike Place Market, and up to Westlake Center on a single ride. Add a transfer, and you’ll be able to ride back up to South Lake Union. The ride would be made possible by the Center City Connector — a proposed 1.1-mile downtown streetcar line along 1st Ave.

Continue reading →

Hill’s rents continue to soar as Seattle delays affordable housing plan

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E Denny Way's Pantages is featured in the city's report on affordable housing (Image: William Wright Photography)

E Denny Way’s Pantages is featured in the city’s report on affordable housing (Image: William Wright Photography)

From the Seattle Workforce Housing study

From the Seattle Workforce Housing study

Screen Shot 2014-06-29 at 8.16.20 PMHousing costs on Capitol Hill and throughout Seattle are reaching new heights as the most recent study showed average rents on the Hill have reached $1,557 a month. That’s up $162 from this time last year when CHS reported on soaring rents in 2013.

Escalating housing costs have created what many officials say is an affordable housing crisis in Seattle. In February, Seattle City Council member Mike O’Brien said there was a “sense of urgency” to develop an affordable housing plan as soon as possible. “Every day the challenge is growing, people are struggling to survive,” O’Brien said.

At that time, O’Brien said the council would have an affordable housing plan by the end of this summer following the results of three studies. At a special committee meeting last week to review one of those studies, O’Brien said the plan would likely not coalesce until September and legislation would not reach the full council until 2015. Continue reading →

Seattle mayor announces public safety plan after wave of shootings

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Dwone Anderson-Young, killed in a double homicide earlier this month, was 23

Dwone Anderson-Young, killed in a double homicide earlier this month, was 23

Saying the city had reached a “crisis of confidence in public safety,” Mayor Ed Murray called for a litany of public safety initiatives and reforms on Wednesday, promising to create citizen oversight of the police department, create 500 new summer jobs for teens, and to work with state officials to require background checks for all gun sales in Washington.

In one of his most impassioned speeches since taking office, Murray announced his “Compact for a Safe Seattle” before a special session of the Seattle City Council. The announcements come in the wake of several high profile shootings, and some that received less attention.

“It’s tough sitting down with a mother whose son was gunned down just blocks from her house,” Murray said Wednesday. Continue reading →

City Council makes O’Toole SPD chief, sends universal pre-K to ballot

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(Image: City of Seattle)

(Image: City of Seattle)

Monday was chock-full of Seattle civics excitement as the City Council voted in the first female chief of the Seattle Police Department and approved a universal pre-K plan to appear on the November ballot.

Following the council vote, Chief Kathleen O’Toole walked down the hall to take the oath of office, administered by the fellow Irish-blooded Mayor Ed Murray. Murray nominated O’Toole for the post in May.

O’Toole comes into the position with a wealth of experience following decades of police work in Boston, where she rose to commissioner, and more recent work in Ireland. More notably, she comes into the post with no experience at SPD, where the public and elected officials have called for major shake-ups among the department’s highest ranks.

Council member Kshama Sawant cast the lone “no” votes to O’Toole’s confirmation and her $250,000 salary. Sawant said she wasn’t convinced O’Toole would bring the deep reform needed at SPD and that no public official should make over $100,000. Continue reading →

Pro-growth group tries to halt height rollback in Seattle’s lowrise neighborhoods

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A pro-development advocacy group is taking a page from the slow-growthers of Seattle with an appeal of proposed City Council legislation seeking to roll back increased height limits in the city’s lowrise neighborhoods.

“Today Smart Growth Seattle filed an appeal of the City’s Determination of Non-Significance (PDF) for legislation that would roll back a decade of progress toward welcoming growth in transit oriented neighborhoods,” the organization’s director Roger Valdez wrote in a Thursday statement to media about the move.

In its appeal, Smart Growth Seattle’s contends that the city’s lowrise zoning is working well.

“If adopted, the currently proposed Lowrise Multifamily Zoning Code Adjustments would substantially restrict the development capacity in the City’s lowrise zones, eliminating thousands of housing units that otherwise could be built,” the appellant states. “Smart Growth Seattle’s position is that the current lowrise zones are working well, allowing appropriately scaled and a wide variety of multifamily housing that meets much of the housing needs in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill.” Continue reading →

Mayor says deal in place for Uber-taxi harmony on the streets of Seattle

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Seattle won’t be known as the city that rejected ridesharing after all. Screen-Shot-2014-04-28-at-10.09.00-AM-400x298Mayor Ed Murray announced an accord Monday in the ongoing battles between Seattle’s taxi companies and new-era car services like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar. The “historic agreement” will provide “a framework to enable all parties in the for-hire industry to compete fairly to serve the needs of the public,” a statement from the mayor’s office reads.

Here are the key components of the deal, according to the announcement.

·         Transportation network companies and their drivers will be licensed and required to meet specific insurance requirements.

·         The City will work with the industry to clarify or change state insurance law to account for recent changes in the industry, similar to recent actions in Colorado.

·         There will be no cap on the number of transportation network company drivers.

·         The City will provide 200 new taxi licenses over the next four years.

·         Taxi and for-hire licenses will transition to a property right that is similar to a medallion in other cities.

·         For-hire drivers will have hailing rights.

·         An accessibility fund will be created through a $0.10 per ride surcharge for drivers and owners to offset higher trip and vehicle costs for riders who require accessibility services.

The latest regulations must still be approved by the City Council. In March, CHS reported on legislation to regulate new services like Uber that set caps on the numbers of drivers who could participate. What followed was continued disagreements and legal threats. The proposed caps on the numbers of drivers allowed to operate with the new services were especially contentious. The new deal seemingly puts off any remaining legal threats to the regulations and should allow the new services to continue to operate in Seattle. For anybody tired of the historically poor service offered by the area’s leading cab companies, the agreement is a clear victory. For anti-corporate shuttle activists? Well, the agreement will give them more protest targets.

City Council set to upgrade Pike/Pine preservation rules — Here are 8 projects already underway

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It is legislation that has inspired some of the most awkward headlines in the history of Seattle journalism.

Why aren’t developers incentivized to save entire Pike/Pine buildings?, CHS asked, thus burning this decade’s allotment for using “incentivized” in a headline.

Meanwhile, City Council tells developers told to keep old city character, a TV station sputtered while also failing to note the preservation rules apply only to these blocks of Pike/Pine:

118096a

Monday afternoon, the Seattle City Council is expected to approve updated legislation creating the fourth phase of the Pike/Pine Conservation Overlay District. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill food+drink owners back charter amendment to undo $15 minimum wage

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Friedman at work (Image: Liberty)

Friedman at work (Image: Libertybars.com)

Efforts to overturn Seattle’s historic $15 minimum wage law are causing a stir with the help of some prominent Capitol Hill food+drink business owners. On Thursday, the group Forward Seattle filed for a charter amendment that would supplant the standing $15 minimum wage law with a $12.50 minimum, phased in over five years.

According to city records, Forward Seattle has been steadily raising money in an effort to get its $12.50 ballot measure before voters. Currently the group has raised $9,000 with the help of donations from Liberty Bar owner Andrew Friedman ($500) and Poquitos co-owner Rich Fox ($250). PubliCola has more on who has donated what. Poquitos is a CHS advertiser and Liberty has mixed us a few mighty fine old fashioneds here and there.

Continue reading →