Capitol Hill’s affordable 12th Ave Arts was developed by Community Roots Housing, also a Public Development Authority (Image: City of Seattle)
The search has begun for candidates to be part of the first board to lead Seattle’s new Seattle Social Housing Public Development Authority.
The Seattle Renters’ Commission announced this week the call for community members to serve on the board will be open through March: Continue reading
The Seattle City Council is expected to approve a resolution Tuesday in support of the King County Crisis Care Centers levy proposal slated to come before voters in April.
If approved, the levy would cost the median-value homeowner around an estimated $121 a year over a nine-year period. The levy could raise as much as $1.25 billion through 2032 to fund construction of the five crisis care centers and increase services in the county. Continue reading
As she winds down her decade on the Seattle City Council, Kshama Sawant is rallying around a workers rights fight at PCC grocery markets as she attempts to lay the groundwork for a national “Workers Strike Back” campaign. A press release from her City Council office says the councilmember will join a group of PCC workers at the company’s downtown location Monday afternoon:
Councilmember Kshama Sawant (District 3, Central Seattle), chair of the Seattle City Council’s Sustainability and Renters’ Rights Committee, will join the workers at PCC Community Markets for a press conference Monday morning, March 13, 2023. The workers, who are members of UFCW Local 3000, will expose poor working conditions, highlight their concrete demands, and announce a rank-and-file organizing effort at PCC stores across the Seattle area. Poor conditions for PCC workers were significantly worsened by the pandemic, and then further exacerbated when City Council Democrats rescinded the $4 per hour pandemic hazard pay late last year. The press conference will be followed by an informational picket outside the Downtown PCC to begin gathering community support. PCC workers’ contract expires later this year.
The city press release says Sawant and the PCC workers will be joined “by activists from Workers Strike Back, an independent movement launched by Sawant and her organization, Socialist Alternative.” Continue reading
(Image: votestephenbrown.com)
This week, CHS reported on the nine(!) candidates already lined up to vie for the District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council. There is another council candidate you will also find on Capitol Hill.
Stephen Brown, founder of the Capitol Hill-born Eltana Bagels, is making a run for the council’s District 1 seat representing West Seattle. Take it away, West Seattle Blog:
In his announcement – which you can read in full here – Brown vows “to bring a pragmatic approach on issues such as urban vitality, small business support, and transit” and says, “I began to seriously consider running a few years ago when I decided to keep Eltana Bagels open and un-boarded during the height of the Black Lives Matter, George Floyd protests, and ensuing CHOP occupancy. I could have followed many businesses at the time and closed my doors or joined some of my neighboring businesses in their lawsuit against the city. Instead, I listened to the community and to my employees. We worked to keep people employed and keep our doors open for our customers. I think that kind of collaborative leadership is desperately needed on the Council right now.”
While the field includes two pot entrepreneurs, no Capitol Hill business owners have yet joined the D3 race.
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Officials say Seattle’s reforms designed to boost the creation of so-called accessory dwelling units have succeeded with a “350%” boost in production since the legislation was passed in 2019.
The Seattle City Council’s land use committee heard an update on the city’s “backyard housing” trends Wednesday afternoon based on the city’s “2022 ADU Annual Report.” (PDF)
According to the report, production of the units “has exploded by 3.5 times, from 280 units a year in 2019 to 988 in 2022,” the council’s notes on the session read.
The 2019 reforms came after city analysis showed only 1% of approximately 124,000 single-family zoned lots in Seattle in use for single family residential development had added attached or detached “accessory dwelling unit” structures.
Next steps, according to the review, include continuing to monitor trends including sales data, informing the mayor’s growth planning work, and finding ways to “support more equitable use of ADUs by helping lower and moderate income homeowners” build or live in the housing.
30% of ADUs permitted in 2022 were in census tracts with a median household income above $135,000, “consistent with the share of all tracts at that income level in Seattle,” the report notes.
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Up against a rising tide, SDOT’s Vision Zero overhaul comes amid a nationwide road safety crisis
(Source: SDOT Vision Zero Top to Bottom Review)
A City Council committee Tuesday will hear new Department of Transportation head Greg Spotts’s plan for overhauling Seattle’s approach to street safety to better incorporate so-called “Vision Zero” concepts into every project and to implement a “safe systems” model with roads designed to be “self-enforcing.”
Spotts’s report (PDF) on the plan was released in late February. “The draft Vision Zero ‘Top to Bottom Review’ has been circulating internally and has catalyzed productive conversations about what specifically we can do this year to make our streets safer. In the coming weeks we will be sharing info on action steps and funding,” the director said earlier this year.
“People at multiple levels of government are collaborating on this urgent issue and positive change is coming,” Spotts added. “We feel the urgency and we are committed to meaningful action for safer streets with a focus on underserved communities.”
The report follows Mayor Bruce Harrell’s selection of the former chief sustainability officer at the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services and “15-minute city advocate” last summer to lead SDOT as the mayor said he was seeking a more “balanced” approach that better recognizes “the role of cars and new electric vehicles.”
And it comes as Seattle is grappling with its place in nationwide trends indicating the roadways are increasingly deadly — especially for those walking or riding bikes. Lowering speed limits hasn’t helped on its own.
According to the city, people walking and biking are involved in 7% of the traffic collisions in Seattle and account for 66% of the traffic fatalities. Seattle’s Vision Zero program was launched in 2015 with a goal to end serious injuries and fatalities citywide by 2030.
“We found that safety interventions and countermeasures used by SDOT to advance Vision Zero make our streets safer,” the executive summary of the new report says. “We also identified dozens of potential opportunities to improve SDOT’s Vision Zero efforts – by strengthening policies and improving policy implementation, streamlining decision-making, improving project delivery, and moving more quickly toward broader implementation of proven interventions where they are most needed.” Continue reading
I’ve never seen Sleepless in Seattle
Last year, the Seattle City Council created a new commission hoped to help attract new film, television, commercial, and streaming projects in the city.
Now the Seattle Film Commission is looking for its first members:
The Seattle Film Commission will be a diverse, 11-member group of film industry professionals representing 11 film-related disciplines. Continue reading
An online map wouldn’t have saved the American Elms of Kerry Hall — but it would have helped everybody know why they were coming down
The Seattle City Council Tuesday approved a raft of updates to tree protection rules put in place last year that includes a requirement for a new city mapping system to alert residents to upcoming tree work.
Tuesday’s legislation was approved 9-0 and shaped “primarily in response to feedback from tree service providers,” according to council staff. It fine tunes last year’s legislation requiring tree service providers to register with the city prior to conducting work on private property.
In addition to some language tweaks and simplifications, Tuesday’s update will move the process of informing the public about upcoming tree work to the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections. Providers will now need to register and report planned work to SDCI and the department will provide public notice at least three days in advance.
As part of the legislation, SDCI is required to begin posting online notices on a map-based system by March 31, 2024.
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The Seattle City Council’s public safety committee Tuesday is being briefed on the effort to upgrade the 911 emergency dispatch system in the city including incorporating a new pilot program that deploys social workers and behavioral health specialists with Seattle Police officers for a limited set of circumstances when mental health expertise is needed and the situation is deemed safe for non-police intervention.
The new $1.5 million “dual dispatch” program will begin a process of dispatching “civilian staff to augment the current response to 911 calls with a mental/behavioral health nexus,” the city said, “strengthening our public safety network by diversifying our 911 response options.” Continue reading
Visualizations from Waterfront Seattle show before and after scenes at locations along the Pike and Pine streetscapes. The city doesn’t have designs for the Capitol Hill portions it is ready to release to the public.
(Image: Waterfront Seattle)
Construction has begun on the $17.5 million street, bike, and sidewalk project that will make Pike and Pine one-way between the waterfront and Bellevue Ave — but don’t expect the change to one-way streets on Capitol Hill any time soon.
A spokesperson for the project that was celebrated last week with officials breaking ground and turning over shovels of dirt trucked into Westlake Center to begin construction on the effort tells CHS there is no schedule yet for the work to reach Capitol Hill though the hope is for the whole thing to be wrapped up by fall of 2024.
“We do not currently have an overall phasing schedule for this project or know yet when work will begin in the Capitol Hill area,” the Waterfront project representative said. “We are working with neighbors, residents and businesses in the area to keep them informed on construction work to reduce impacts, and are also sharing information and updates on our weekly construction email.”
(Image: Waterfront Seattle)
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The City of Seattle’s Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects is designing this project in coordination with the Downtown Seattle Association and the Seattle Department of Transportation “to improve east-west connections between the waterfront and surrounding neighborhoods.”
Gary Merlino Construction will take on the $17.45M job on the project that will overhaul the streets, improve crosswalks, upgrade bike lanes, and widen sidewalks on Pike and Pine from 1st Ave to Bellevue Ave.
“Pike and Pine streets are at the heart of downtown Seattle’s urban core. This improvement project will help people easily reach many of Seattle’s great destinations – Pike Place Market, the Convention Center, Paramount Theater, downtown retail, Capitol Hill’s restaurants and coffee shops, and so much more,” Greg Spotts, director at the Seattle Department of Transportation, said about the groundbreaking. “Whether walking, biking, or taking transit such as the light rail and the Streetcar, residents and tourists alike will have a safer, more comfortable trip.”
Officials say the work will improve the Pike and Pine streetscape by adding greenery, new seating, and consistent design from end to end. The improvements will include one-way traffic on Pike and Pine streets from 1st Ave to Bellevue Ave, with Pike being one-way eastbound and Pine being one-way westbound. Continue reading
