The days are numbered for the Park View apartment house across the street from Kerry Park on West Highland Drive. The Queen Anne Historical Society wanted to save the aging, run-down building as a protected historical landmark, but the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board on March 16 voted 4-3 against the designation
This list of crimes was compiled from censored police reports and written by Russ Zabel.
Boy Scout Elliott Tonning, a member of Magnolia Troop 80, organized an ambitious work party for the Heron Habitat Helpers in his pursuit of an Eagle ranking, an honor that requires completion of a Leadership Service Project.
Two years after the start of the Iraq war, and five months after George W. Bush's reelection, would have been a great time for Seattle liberals to be apathetic. That wasn't the case Saturday, March 19.Although turnout was noticeably smaller than for the previous year, hundreds of Seattleites still braved the pouring rain to rally at the Seattle Center and later marched downtown to mark the Iraq war's second anniversary.
In these days of Red versus Blue, when every other story regionally and nationally is about Democratic politicians fighting Republicans, it's often hard to realize that the pols on both sides of the aisle do seem to be agreeing more and more on one thing.The kiddies in D.C. and Olympia appear united in trying to hide their actions from the voting public - the very people who pay their salaries and bestow upon them whatever prestige they have.
In his heart he is an activist. In his mind, he is an inspiring visionary. And through his work, John de Graaf, award-winning director of the PBS "Affluenza" series and national coordinator of the Take Back Your Time movement, compels his audience to pause and reflect. He is also a Queen Anne resident and Coe Elementary School parent.
Time marches on, to be sure, but unfortunately many of us find keeping pace a certifiable bummer.Doesn't have to be, says Dennis Kenny, co-founder/president of Caresource Healthcare Communications and co-author of the new book "Aging in Stride." The book, also written by Dr. Christine Himes and minister Elizabeth Oettinger, is a veritable clearinghouse of information on the vast array of issues surrounding the process of aging. And not just aging, but aging successfully.
Bowing to public pressure, the Kirkland City Council voted 5-2 last month to put an end to an ambitious public-private partnership that would have transformed a parking lot into a four-story, mixed-use project with underground parking at the corner of Lake Street and Central Way. Opponents of the project were overjoyed. However, others thought the city council made the wrong call. They included council member Tom Dillon, who resigned in disgust immediately after the vote.
Chances look good that sculptures of two affectionate bunny rabbits, a couple of alert bears and a pair of exuberant deer will continued to make Kirkland their home, according to those involved with the "Save the Animals" fundraising effort.The total of the fund was $137,439.05 as of March 22, which is roughly 65 percent of the $212,160 needed to buy the three Dan Ostermiller pieces, officials said.Allison Blair (left) and Kennedy Nicholson sell doughnuts to raise money to save the statue "The Leaping Deer." Photos by Bradley Enghaus
The problem with political correctness - even if I subscribe to some of its core beliefs, especially making damn sure that opportunity is truly equal for minorities - is that PC's most-rigid followers misread the world with their blinkered view, just as surely as those who follow an allegedly conservative bent in their natures to the exclusion of other viewpoints.One of the major problems with following any ideology is that you often can't see the variety in the forest for the darkness of the trees in the aggregate.I was telling a friend the other day about a conversation I had a couple of years ago at a Seattle party. Another partygoer, a young woman, grew more and more exasperated with me during the course of our initially convivial chat.We had been talking about abortion and had agreed that we were both pro-choice. Somehow the death penalty came up soon after, and I said that after working closely with convicts for two years in the state of Washington, I'd become a limited advocate of the death penalty in some, not all, cases.The look on her face said plainly that I'd transgressed.
Last year our City Council passed a truly bad piece of legislation when expanding the Multi Family Tax Exemption (MFTE) program. This program was originally created to stimulate construction of low-income apartment units in distressed areas. If a developer sets aside 20 percent of the units and prices them to be affordable to people making below a certain percentage of the citywide median income, then that developer will not have to pay property taxes on the whole building for 10 years. The difference in city revenue is made up by taxing non-exempt properties at a higher rate.If developers could only take advantage of these tax breaks in genuinely distressed or low-income areas of the city that are not meeting their housing growth targets under the Comprehensive Plan, and if the set-aside rental rates were pegged to say, 50 percent of median or below, then perhaps the rest of us picking up the slack through increased property taxes might feel it was worth doing, in the same way we vote for the housing levy.
People are always coming up to me and asking me why I can't be serious. And when I say "people," I mean my children. I suppose that, since I look like an adult, they naturally expect me to act like one. Ha! When I sleep, I am very serious. It's the rest of the time that I must be having trouble with. For her 15th birthday our eldest daughter received a Beta (Siamese fighting fish to you), which had the bad grace to die less than two weeks later. I asked my husband to please flush the mortal remains, because I just couldn't bring myself to do so. My 5-year-old saw the empty fishbowl on the counter and got curious. "Mom! What happened to Stephanie's Beta fish?""It died, honey.""Where is it?""Daddy flushed it down the toilet."Her little face scrunched up, she put her hands on her hips and she said, "I hope he doesn't do that to me!"
For the third biennium in a row, our state budget is in a hole. It's raining, but our rainy-day fund has long ago run dry. Current revenues aren't adequately funding services essential to the health and well-being of Washington citizens, such as our state's correctional facilities, health and critical mental health services and our public schools. Although our state is moving forward, we're falling further behind.
The gurgling of the downspouts was such a sweet sound early Saturday morning. With no perceptible wind noise, the spattering raindrops were like an almost-forgotten melody coming back to life. As I walked under a big umbrella, the raindrops drummed. Big ones, little ones and all very persistent. This was not a dramatic spring shower with great pyrotechnics such as thunder, lightning, glaring sun and then dark, brooding clouds. Rather it was a long, one-dimensional gray day with the steady, moderate rain seemingly never stopping until just before sunset.
The Queen Anne Helpline is stepping up to bat this spring season, meeting the growing food needs of residents on the Hill. The Helpline office has seen an increase in phone calls from families and the elderly seeking food assistance. Patrons of the clothing bank, who normally take just items of clothing, have started taking more nonperishable food items off the Helpline shelves as well.