Madison Park Community Council representation was decidedly absent at a March 21 community meeting to discuss creating a neighborhood comprehensive plan.Historic Madison Park, a relatively new community organization, is stepping in to encourage creating a comprehensive plan in the absence of interest by the Madison Park Community Council, members say.Community-council president Maurice Cooper doubted a council representative would attend the meeting. "We don't think it is particularly important," he said.
Hurling the ball
On the morning of Monday, April 2, a man and a woman were found dead on the fourth floor of the University of Wash-ington's Gould Hall, located between University Way Northeast and 15th Avenue Northeast near Northeast 40th Street. At 9:31 a.m., University Police responded to calls from the building's third floor reporting gunfire. They found the bodies of Rebecca Griego, 26 and Jonathan Rowan, 41, and a handgun in the room. Police say six shots were fired. No eyewitnesses saw the shooting nor was anyone else harmed.
SEATTLE - Mayor Greg Nickels and Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske are trying to drum up support for a new concept in the way crime is handled in Seattle. Called Neighborhood Policing, it is a "faster, stronger and smarter" approach to public safety, according to the mayor. There are three elements to the proposal, and each faces its own challenges. The primary goal is to add an additional 105 officers to the force between 2008 and 2012. That's in addition to the 49 new cops added to the force since 2005, Nickels said. However, Seattle City Council member Richard McIver said, paying for the new cops will involve cuts in other programs since hope of getting $21 million in business-and-occupation taxes from the state is dead in the water for this legislative session
GEORGETOWN - Georgetown is a sleepy neighborhood on the weekends. The din of the weekday industrial elements is replaced by the sound of birds, and of course the occasional train or plane. But, on March 31, a new energy filled the streets of Georgetown - Seattle's Second Annual Idiotarod. That's right - the Idiotarod. Teams of five to eight, decked out in outlandish costume, mushed decorated shopping carts through the streets of the neighborhood in search of checkpoints. Surgeons, Santas, Tony the Tiger, leprechauns, mimes and even syphilis (from the team, Enemies of Man) filed out of their cars and prepared their shopping carts. Checkpoints of the free-for-all race, which attracted a group of 20-and 30-somethings from the Puget Sound area, are kept under the radar until the day of the race.
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Once again I played chicken with the IRS's filing deadline. Although the stress from my procrastination was self-induced, for many qualified people aspiring to attend college, April 17 is a cruel reminder of a hopeless opportunity.While in class studying how to prepare tax returns I became acquainted with some of the peculiarities of our tax codes. Having been out of school for decades and cursed with a limited attention span, I found myself drifting off in la-la-land as the instructor was discussing the Hope Educational Tax Credit (HETC). For no apparent reason I began to focus on the fine print pertaining to this $1,500 financial bonanza for freshman and sophomores. I read a passage stating that those convicted of felony possession offenses were barred from this program.
Last week Seattle's Office of Housing released its long awaited inventory of low-income housing. There were some startling findings including a dramatic and continuing loss of low-income housing in our city. In just the past two years we lost 800 units to demolition and over 3,200 units to condominium conversions, helping to drive vacancy rates down and rents up. More homelessness and even longer waiting lists for our city's limited supply of subsidized housing are the consequence.
Why did Franklin High School student Leonard Hunter travel north from his home in Rainier Beach, walk into an Everett duplex, and die from gunshot wounds on March 27? It's the question confronting Everett homicide detectives as they stitch together the events that led to the violent death of the charismatic, 18-year-old - who was also a three-time felon convicted for burglary, forgery and strong-arm robbery. While Hunter's death is sad and troubling, the circumstances around it, should officers prove the witnesses' testimony to be true, are even more disturbing: aggravated assault and armed robbery gone awry. Again, Hunter was already a convicted felon, and that is nothing to be celebrated. However, Hunter's reported full-workload in school, his solid performance on Franklin High's football team during the 2006 season, and his efforts to avoid drug abuse (he allegedly was three months' clean and sober in a court-sanctioned treatment program before his murder) are all admirable achievements. Despite the better path he seemingly tried to follow, the damaging edges of his double life snapped down on him, leaving family and friends to mourn and wonder what kind of a man he would have become had he followed the higher road.
About 30 Madison Park residents, business owners and building owners attended an exploratory meeting at the Madison Park Bathhouse on March 21 proposing a community effort to create a comprehensive growth plan for the Madison Park community.Sponsored by Historic Madison Park, the primary speakers included Seattle City Councilmember Sally Clark, Seattle City Lights' Ray Ramos and John Nierenberger and H. Isaac Molitch, landscape and gardening chair for Historic Madison Park."We want to be able to control what happens in our community," explained Sean Smith, business-district chairperson for Historic Madison Park, who welcomed attendees.
Don't be surprised if walking down East Cherry Street this month feels like stepping into an off-Broadway production. It just might, as you catch a free showing of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks' plays being performed as part of the nationwide 365 Days/365 Plays. Director-producer Susie Polnaszek and Spectrum Dance Theatre will present the short plays in Madrona this month, in conjunction with other groups around Seattle and the country. "I want to present moments at various street corners in my neighborhood," Polnaszek said. "I like the fact that all of my group's performances will be outdoors, in the streets and parks."
With gas surpassing the $3-per-gallon mark I'm sure many will remember putting 48 cents' worth of gas in the tank just to make it to West Seattle and back. We used to turn our cars off and coast down long hill runs - it was easy with the mechanical brakes we had back then.And it was accepted when several friends shared a ride, they would all chip in for gas.
By Jeremy Eaton
Recently, a New Jersey Superior Court judge insulted parents by equating homeschooling of their children with child abuse. Judge Thomas Zamphino said, "In today's threatening world, where we seek to protect children from abuse, not just physical but also educational abuse, how can we not monitor the educational welfare of all our children?"Zamphino is right that we live in a threatening world, and children are especially vulnerable. What he failed to realize, however, is that the threat does not come from Christian families that don't like the secular curriculum of public schools, or parents of special-needs kids who don't want their children exposed to hostile school environments. The real threat to our children comes from the schools themselves, which have proven themselves incompetent, negligent and not up to the task of taking care of a budget, let alone a child.
It's tax time, and that usually means it's also time to procrastinate actually doing your taxes. It also means it's time to confront all the paper records you've been filing and/or piling for the past year. There aren't any hard-and-fast rules for record retention, which is why guidelines aren't particularly helpful, vary widely and are often unclear. To make matters worse, finding the files you need at tax time can be "taxing" to say the least. Most of what we file is never retrieved again, and we waste time trying to find the few documents we actually need.