March 5th, 2013
Every year at the start of the commercial fishing season Ballard First Lutheran Church holds a ceremonial Blessing of the Fleet at Fisherman’s Terminal. This is a great opportunity to recognize the hard, often dangerous work of commercial fishing and to thank the people on and off the boats for being a
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Posted: March 5th, 2013 under
Budget and Economic Development.
October 24th, 2012
This week is National Save for Retirement Week. If you’re like many people, thinking about retirement makes you a little anxious; like you’ve fallen way behind in class homework and the test is tomorrow. Worse, some of you reading this may be out of work with no income to carve up into
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Posted: October 24th, 2012 under
Budget and Economic Development.
October 2nd, 2012
How best to turn Seattle’s always-limited resources into efficient services over the next two years? That’s the question my Council colleagues and I deal with this fall as we examine the 2013-2014 proposed City budget. The process started for City Council last Monday. In a rare Seattle moment of required protocol, Councilmember
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July 6th, 2012
Somehow we got into July and I’m not sure how that happened. At the top of this year the Council went through our annual agenda priorities exercise which yielded this 2012 Action Agenda and I thought, “Great. We finished this relatively quickly at the start of the year. Now we have the
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May 18th, 2012
When you think of the types of business sectors we have in Seattle it’s easy to mentally jump to jets, coffee and software. But when you think about an icon for the Northwest, few would challenge the salmon as our region’s reigning champion symbol. Our local economy and our dinner tables have
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May 16th, 2012
We had two great presentations in the Council’s Economic Resiliency & Regional Relations Committee yesterday on current job trends and the better coordination under way in the Seattle area to prep people to be successful competing in the sectors that are hiring. Matt Houghton from the City’s Office of Economic development started
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February 21st, 2012
When I was 11 I had the 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers team photo taped to my bedroom door. If I had that photo still I could have checked it to recall the fifth starter of that world championship team. Instead, I hit Wikipedia and learned the other starting guard was (drum roll,
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September 23rd, 2011
Mayor Mike McGinn delivers his proposal for a 2012 City budget Monday thus kicking off the two month budget review season (which just happens to coincide with baseball playoff season, an important fact for people in many other cities). Over the past few years budget review has made Seattle’s otherwise delicious autumn
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Posted: September 23rd, 2011 under
Budget and Economic Development.
November 4th, 2010
With the vote tallies for the state-wide initiatives clear we can now get down to building the final 2011 City of Seattle budget. The Mayor delivered his budget proposal Sept. 27, but it wasn’t until Wednesday morning that we really knew how much money we would have next year. Revenues (sales tax
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Posted: November 4th, 2010 under
Budget and Economic Development.
October 14th, 2010
One of the more ardent groups of advocates fighting to change the Mayor’s budget comes from the world of public access television. When Comcast and Millenium were awarded the contracts to provide Seattle neighborhoods with cable television we gained franchise fee revenue. This money must be spent on community-related technology, including cable
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