It gets weirder and weirder every day. The city council has refused to meet with neighbors of the Chubby and Tubby store. Casa Latina has selected this site as the new spot for their day labor program.
Unfortunately,it does not have ready freeway access or a good pick-up place for the laborers. The lawless tag-a-longs, who are major problem at the current Casa Latina site in Belltown, will adversely affect this South End neighborhood.
With these concerns in mind, the City Council wants each person with an issue concerning Casa Latina to make an appointment and come to their downtown offices. This could easily cause each person to miss up to nine days of work to meet with each and every council member, if they can get the appointments. Many would lose their jobs if they missed this much work.
However, each council member has found time to meet with the well-paid executive staff of Casa Latina.
Casa Latina was scheduled to conduct community outreach to its future, neighboring community. This simply has not happened. They do not want the neighbors to know they are coming until they are there.
Mayor Greg Nickels is in on this conspiracy of silence. His staff recently came to Southeast Seattle and has tried to gag the community members who oppose the relocation of Casa Latina.
The mayor wants no contact with the media from these members until this is all decided. Of course by then it will be a done deal, and Casa Latina will have tag-alongs drinking, drugging, and fighting along Rainier Avenue South, just like what's been reported in the Belltown area.
The Belltown community has made it very clear they want the tag-a-long mess out of their neighborhood. They do not want these folks standing in front of their million dollar condos.
Why not relocate Casa Latina at the old Home of the Good Shepherd in Wallingford? How about Lake City? How about the University District, it has good freeway access?
We know West Seattle is not acceptable because it's the Mayor's home turf. I guess that leaves Southeast Seattle.
We now hear that the reason for selecting the Rainier site is so Casa Latina can tap into the Community Development Fund that was granted to Southeast Seattle to mitigate the impact of light rail running down our streets.
Since our leaders have a gag "order" from the mayor's office, we will not hear about the project and its problems in our media. Just why should our media be out of bounds to our leadership? Why should our community be kept in the dark? Why do we deserve Belltown's problems? Just what is the hold that Casa Latina has on our city leaders?
Fred Quarnstrom
Southeast Seattle[[In-content Ad]]
