1. At a press conference this morning, a group calling itself the Coalition for a Sustainable 520 will announce its alternative proposal to replace the 520 bridge across Lake Washington. Unlike the proposal adopted by the state legislature and supported by Gov. Chris Gregoire, which would have six lanes, including two for buses and HOVs, the coalition is expected to propose a six-lane bridge with two dedicated lanes for light rail instead of HOV lanes, no ramps leading through the Arboretum, and less impact on the Montlake neighborhood.
In an statement Friday, the group said this morning’s announcement would include unspecified “elected officials” who support their plan. Maurice Cooper, a Madison Park resident and member of the coalition, said Friday that he expects McGinn, who has said he supports looking at a four-lane 520 option as well, to be at this morning’s announcement. House Speaker Frank Chopp (D-43), state Sen. Ed Murray (D-43) and state Rep. Jamie Pedersen (D-43), have all said they support a smaller, more transit-heavy 520 replacement.
In an email last week, the city council expressed concerns about the state’s preferred 520 option. However, they parted ways with McGinn and the 43rd district legislators in one key respect: The letter said the council hopes to “resolve the design concerns over the next few months”—a key difference from coalition supporters, who want to revisit the entire 12-year 520 planning process.
2. The Alliance—a coalition of pro-labor Democratic state House legislators and pro-environmental Democratic state House legislators, who caused a slight stir in Olympia last year as the Blue-Green Coalition, are more determined this session to make an impact—organizing their collective clout to make sure the House passes a progressive budget.
Alliance leader Rep. Sharon Nelson (D-34)
At 12 members, it’s not a huge group, but it’s big enough to thwart the 50 votes Speaker Chopp needs to pass the budget.
They’d be a lot stronger, however, if more than just two of Seattle’s 12 reps (Sharon Nelson, D-34, and Scott White, D-46) were a part of the group.
There’s also a formal moderate Democratic faction emerging on the House side, under the leadership of Reps. Lynn Kessler (D-24) and Larry Springer (D-45). And they’ve partnered with a group of moderate Democrats on the Senate side, including Sen. Chris Marr (D-6) to form a bigger coalition ,which reportedly meets on Wednesday nights. (The moderate senators call themseleves “Road Kill” for “middle of the road.”)
3. Mayor Mike McGinn’s email to city staffers this weekend saying he would postpone 200 planned senior-level job cuts—”recalibrating how the process unfolds,” as he put it—was met with “some relief” by the volunteers behind workingseattle.org, a web site created by city employees concerned about the cuts. However, the site says, McGinn “has not clearly broadened the scope to include an assessment of all programs and all positions; he continues to call for reductions which target only a small group of employees.”
Workingseattle.org goes on:
“He continues to be hampered by misinformation, including the nature of the growth of senior-level positions since 2002. The majority of these positions are NOT senior-level …
“We worry that the mayors statement still demonstrates an unwillingness to understand the nature of Civil Service, the City’s classifications system, and the value of these employees.”
4. Amid all the McGinn administration shakeups, we missed this press release on Friday: The city is reopening bids for the city’s seawall construction contract because of a potential conflict of interest: Mayoral advisor Chris Bushnell is married to a marine biologist, Megan Bushnell, who works for a company included in one of the bids for seawall design work.
5. Start the deathwatch for brick-and-mortar game stores like Best Buy and Gamestop. Downloadable games are selling like mad, and, as GameNerd called it in a year-end post, Seattle has taken pole position in the growing sector with the massive download store Steam. Its creators, Bellevue’s Valve Software, announced their 2009 stats this weekend: “Unit sales increased by more than 205%, marking the fifth straight year the platform has realized over 100% year-over-year growth in unit sales.”
Other biggie stats included 25 million active users who racked up an average of 13 billion minutes of Steam usage every month.
