Cathy Moore Says Young People Want Yards, Bob Kettle and Rob Saka Test Blast Balls, and PubliCola Predicts the Future
Monday, January 6
Anti-Housing Activists Hope for Receptive Audience as Council Takes Up Comprehensive Plan Update
As the city considers density increases so modest that its own planning commission called them utterly inadequate, single-family preservationists are creating petitions to oppose any changes in “their” neighborhoods, especially those that allow more renters to live in more parts of Seattle.
Tuesday, January 7
SPD Fires Officer Who Struck and Killed Pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula Two Years Ago
Kevin Dave, the police officer who struck and killed 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula while driving almost three times the speed limit, finally got fired after spending two years on SPD’s payroll after killing Kandula, whose family is suing the city for more than $110 million.
Wednesday, January 8
It’s Time to Appoint Another New Councilmember!
Tammy Morales’ resignation opens a spot for yet another new council appointment. The appointment process, which should wrap up before the end of this month, will result in a council with only one member, Dan Strauss, who has served for more than three years, including seven members who have served one year or less.
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One of those recently council members, Cathy Moore, came out hard against a proposal to allow apartments along the periphery of single-family neighborhoods, saying that allowing three-to-six story apartments within 800 feet of 30 transit stops across the city would destroy neighborhood character, denude the landscape, and produce “unstable” housing occupied by renters, who, she said, aren’t “engaged socially and politically” the way property owners are. About six in ten Seattle residents rent their homes.
Thursday, January 9
The Seattle Nice podcast sat down with City Council public safety committee chair Bob Kettle to talk about his priorities for 2025, how much density the city should allow in single-family neighborhoods like Queen Anne, and at what point the new council will stop blaming their predecessors for the real and perceived public safety challenges in Seattle.
Four stories in this week’s afternoon Fizz: Bob Kettle and Rob Saka take a field trip to SPD’s firing range to test blast balls for themselves; the Community Police Commission proposes changes to SPD’s proposed policy allowing the use of “less lethal” weapons, which is moving forward at breakneck speed; the Seattle Times sues SPD for violating an agreement over public records requests; and former police chief Adrian Diaz loses his longtime attorney.
Friday, January 10
PubliCola’s Seattle Predictions for 2025
PubliCola’s founders give you our predictions for 2025. Sandeep thinks Seattle will fail to break out of its political inertia; Josh says you’ll start to hear more open MAGA rhetoric in public places in Seattle (which, he also predicts, will still be riddled with dogs), and I predict that new, even more stringent tree protections will be used to prevent housing for renters in the name of the environment (despite the fact that car-oriented sprawl, which results from insufficient housing in cities, is an existential environmental risk.)
Also, despite a $2 million budget setaside, I predict that SDOT will find reasons not to remove an 8-inch traffic safety curb that prevents dangerous left turns into the parking lot of the preschool Rob Saka’s kids attended, which Saka claimed his constituents found “triggering” and “extremely traumatizing” because it reminds them of Trump’s border wall.
CM Moore: “renters, who, she said, aren’t “engaged socially and politically” the way property owners are. About six in ten Seattle residents rent their homes.”
What an idiot she is turning out to be…
Plenty of renters are engaged with local politics, especially if 60% of residents rent. But if she is that concerned then why not give renters something to buy that isn’t a house and yard? Not everyone wants a yard. Many people would love to own something of their own within walking distance of a park or open space that is bigger than any yard they could afford.
The Comprehensive Plan is required by state law, to guide growth in Seattle. We need more residences in Seattle, another way of saying overall density needs to increase. I support density with a focus on affordability and housing type diversity, as well as ownership. We need to have a city where baristas, pizza delivery drivers and teachers can afford to live, and have the opportunity to own their own residence. We need to structure it in a way that incentivizes housing diversity such as stacked flats and community courtyards, not just townhouses. It’s housing diversity, I believe, that people are going to welcome, and will be critical to affordability. In addition to changes needed to state condominium law, we need to look at greater utilization of co-op models and land trusts. — from her weekly newsletter.
Many cities are overwhelmingly built out of multi-family buildings and they seem to work just fine. In the next breath she will admit that density is good for transit and local business development so who knows what she rally believes, other than in kicking the ladder away now she and her peers have climbed it.