Never had my team or any One Night Count team encountered a dead body. Until this year.

After checking under the south side of the Jose Rizal Bridge and moving behind the industrial buildings at Rainier and Dearborn, we walked south on Rainier. We were bundled up brandishing flashlights and clipboards, chatting bleary-eyed about the news of the day while quietly musing about whether lean-to’s, sleeping bags and camper vans were occupied or not. While walking the south green space encircled by the Rainier Ave. S. off-ramp from Interstate 90, members of my team found a body, partially clothed, that had been there a day or so. We had spread out to check that area and I was closer to Rainier. When the finders came over to join the rest of us none of us quite caught what they said the first time. “We found a body.” What? It’s 3:30 a.m., what did you say? None of us expected to find anyone in that area. It’s relatively open with a few fir trees, but no place to hunker down really.

The team leaders did a great job managing the next steps – calling the police, checking in with the rest of the team members, comforting the woman who first found the body. The team decided to continue on searching our assigned area because, as more than one person said, this is exactly why we count. One Night Count staff arranged to have trained counselors back at the Compass Center for anyone who wanted to talk about what happened.

A couple of days after the Count we learned more from the Medical Examiner. “The Body,” as we had called it, was a 60-year old woman named Kathryn Ann Blair and she died of hypothermia. In the cloverleaf petal of an interstate off-ramp. In February. In Seattle.

I’ve thought a lot about this experience over the past week and a half. I couldn’t help but wonder who Kathryn Ann Blair was and how she got to be where we found her. Everyone has a story. Sometimes the story helps us focus on our similarities and fragility. Sometimes the story helps us make a little bit of sense out of something seemingly senseless. Thanks to the Medical Examiner’s efforts to reach Kathryn Ann Blair’s relatives, members of my Count team received the following message yesterday. It will be shared at today’s Women in Black vigil, noon-1 p.m., on the west plaza of the Municipal Court building (Fifth and James). Women in Black stand Wednesdays to mark the death of homeless people in our area. They have to stand too often and too long.

Eulogy for Kathryn Ann Blair, 1952–2013 

Kathy Blair, a creative only child, spent most of her life in Akron, Ohio, living with her mother.  

While I do not have the skill to tell Kathy’s story as well as she could have, I want you to know that Kathryn Ann Blair had a beautiful face, thick, wavy hair, big brown eyes, lots of personality, many talents, and people who loved her.

Kathy was a talented writer and spent hours working on stories and making whimsical drawings of the characters.   She loved books and enjoyed spending time in libraries and bookstores. Kathy adored cats, keeping three or more at any one time. At age 10, Kathy was chosen for the role of Helen Keller at Akron’s Weathervane Playhouse.  She loved that role and lived to perform in local theatres. After high school, Kathy earned a bachelor’s degree in art history from Kent State University.  

Kathy was my closest childhood friend—we walked to school together and spent hours talking on the phone.  However, it was not until 2001 that she told me her father had sexually abused her throughout her childhood.  

Kathy began drinking heavily while still in high school and became dependent on alcohol well before reaching age 30.  Kathy was still a young woman when she began showing signs of mental illness and was eventually diagnosed as having schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.  These illnesses plagued Kathy for the rest of her life.

Kathy had no children.  She lived with her mother, Jean Blair, until Jean died several years ago.

After Jean’s death, Kathy continued living in the mobile home they had purchased in 1970.   She found living on her own to be difficult and lonely.   In 2010, Kathy decided to act on her dream of living on the West Coast.  She said goodbye to her friends and cats and traveled to San Francisco, where she briefly lived in her own apartment.  Feeling dissatisfied, Kathy moved to Seattle in 2011, hoping to find happiness and artistic friends.  Instead, she found herself alone and homeless.

Sexual abuse, alcoholism, mental illness and homelessness all contributed to Kathy’s horrible death from hypothermia.  

On January 14, I sent Kathy a final (unanswered) text, “I hope you are warm and safe. Love, Deb.”

My parents, Chet and Alice, my husband, Ken, our daughter, Rebecca, and I, thank each of you for bringing our friend in from the cold and remembering her in this special way.

–D. F. K.

 So far the campaign has forwarded eight (as of this afternoon) See It, Send It submissions:

1 – Photos of what looks to be a panhandling scam — two people switching places in a wheelchair while panhandling on the Waterfont
2 – Photo of an alleged drug dealer and a list of his regular business spots coupled with frustration at no response from police.
3 – Letter from a visitor appalled at the sheer number of homeless people Downtown and aggressive panhandling.
4 – Frustration with garbage from food trucks strewn on the sidewalk long after the vendors are gone.
5 – Hotel evaluation comments from a visitor who didn’t feel safe walking down to the waterfront because of litter, the smell of urine and “begging crackheads.”
6 – Photos submitted of pitbulls, blankets, cardboard signs and other material next to a tour bus stop on the waterfront.
7 – Bank customer observed someone urinating onto the sidewalk in front of the bank entrance.
8 – Visitor intimidated by a barking pitbull at Westlake Park, so intimidated she broke off her shopping trek and asked her hotel to pick her up. 

 None of these are great to find Downtown whether you’re a cruise ship visitor or you live in town. On the good side, I’ve heard from Tom Norwalk, the director of the SCVB, that Seattle Police Department, Seattle Public Utilities and other city departments have jumped quickly to clean up and fix problems identified in these messages. (Yes, we should prevent some of the problems in the first place, but I appreciate the city staff’s response.)

 And then there are the more difficult scenarios to address, the ones involving people impaired in one way or another.

 I hesitated to include the “begging crackheads” language from number 5 above, but I chose to because I think the reaction I have to that language (and the assumptions I make about the user of that language) may explain why we wrestle so hard in Seattle with these questions. I don’t think anyone deserves to be called a “begging crackhead,” even crack addicts. See It, Send It shouldn’t be reduced to an open invitation to vent and it shouldn’t allow people to cavalierly paint everyone with the same brush. Unfortunately, some people see in the See It, Send It campaign an open invitation to sweep the streets indiscriminately. Another email in my box spurred by See It, Send It:

 “I am fed up and disgusted by the crime, filth, human waste, and aggressiveness that comes with a failed plan to deal with excessive vagrancy.  Activists… had a chance with their advocacy and plan.  It’s a failure.  Pouring more time and money into it is irresponsible and absurd.   It’s time for a new plan to aggressively deal the panhandlers, criminals and vagrants that taint our city.  Please take immediate action to curtail funding to 503c3′s perpetuating this problem and empower and embolden our police department to assertively deal with the vagrants.”  

 The language of See It, Send It #5 is dehumanizing and I’m not so hot on the language of the emailer above either.

 At the same time, rejecting See It, Send It’s focus on the overall impact of “street people” is untenable, it would be like putting our heads in the sand. We do have stretches of our streets and areas in our parks where crime, trash and behavior make a lot of people – including homeless people – feel less welcome and less safe. We’re not good at saying so. It makes us feel mean and less compassionate.

 But there’s nothing compassionate about allowing drug dealing to persist or allowing trash to pile up or allowing people in distress to wander without intervention. We do no great service by allowing compassion to create cover for destruction.

 I happen to agree with many supporters of the See It, Send It campaign that we’re not succeeding the way we’d like in our efforts to move people off the streets and into housing and services. We’ve made incredible strides when it comes to building new housing with the services needed to keep people living in their homes successfully.

 However, because of the recession, the toll of drug and alcohol addiction and the crush of untreated mental illness, we have as big a lift in front of us today as we did when we started the 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness. See It, Send It has the possibility to be more than venting. It can and should demand both enforcement and a way off the street for people.

 Just last week we opened the doors on the winter shelters to augment the “regular” number of beds and mats available. We have a Center City Initiative and a Third Avenue project. We just unified property management at Westlake Park and new play area is about to be installed there. We’re pumping up outreach at Westlake to move homeless young people into housing and services. Police are attempting a new treatment diversion approach for some in Belltown. Earlier this year we opened the new Crisis Solutions Center, an alternative to jail or Harborview for people on the street in mental health distress.

 We have good people and good efforts trying to change the facts of street disorder and homelessness. See It, Send It creates the pressure. We all need to stay engaged after hitting the “send” button in order to solve the puzzle.

I haven’t always been this lucky.  In my past jobs — as barista, catering dishwasher/host/bartender, and freelance writer — when I got sick, I had to decide between working while I was sick or losing my carefully budgeted income. It’s estimated that approximately 145,000 people out of Seattle’s 465,000-person workforce don’t have access to paid sick leave. Not surprisingly, the numbers of people without paid sick leave skew toward lower income women and people of color.

Today I voted to require paid sick leave as of September 1, 2012, for workplaces with more than four paid staff. In simple terms, workers must earn one hour of sick time for every 40 hours worked. Depending upon whether your workplace is small, medium or large, you’ll build up to 5, 7 or 9 total days possible. This is a big step, one that not many other cities have taken yet. It’s admittedly a hard step in this economy, but I believe sick leave should be fundamental much the same way we speak now of minimum wage and worker safety protections.

My colleagues and I worked with advocates and opponents over the past several months to craft an approach that would cover workers in need and be relatively simple to understand. The paid sick leave conversation has been a very emotional debate, and it’s revolved around core values – deeply held beliefs about responsibility and compassion. Talking with business-owners and workers, we had some very charged and difficult conversations. I like to think we at Council took a number of steps to rectify a number of the concerns. Here’s what we did:

• We delayed the legislation’s effective date to allow employers time to prepare and adjust.
• We streamlined the original legislation, reducing the number of business categories and standardizing the accrual rate, to help employers more easily navigate.
• For big companies (250 employees or more) using a Paid Time Off pool, the accrual will be a slightly faster one hour for every 30 hours worked up to a minimum of 13.5 days of total PTO.
• We are requiring the City Auditor to conduct a 1-year check-in so we can evaluate the program’s successes and areas for improvement.  We’re one of the first cities in the nation to implement a paid sick leave program.  We’ll undoubtedly run into unexpected hiccups/abusers of the system. We’ll have a mechanism in place to measure and cope.

During the debates on paid sick leave I spoke with many hourly workers without enough of a safety night should they or a loved one fall sick. Some opponents have argued that requiring paid sick time will force businesses to pull back on other benefits or wage increases. That may be true. A study of San Francisco’s implementation indicated it likely has happened there. It may happen here. I still believe that the public health value and the worker support value is high enough to go forward.

I like to think Seattle is setting an example for the rest of the nation.

This morning I spent an hour with a team of health providers at West Seattle High School. The student health center is centrally located, visible in the school, is light and comfortable. And it was busy even at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday. They can do the sports physicals required for high school athletics, they can immunize, they can treat injuries sustained at school in falls or fights, they can dispense medication students require to treat illness or chronic conditions.  Just as important they are a place students can go for stress, depression, anxiety or other mental health concerns. Last year they had 1,339 total visits.

What students themselves don’t see is the intricate coordination between Seattle Public Schools, which funds part of the on-site nurse – and she’s been on-site for 22 years (thanks!), and NeighborCare Health, the non-profit health clinic operator. Money for the other part of the school nurse and for a chunk of the NeighborCare contract comes from the 2004 Families & Education Levy. Then there’s the paperwork of Medicaid billing since many of the kids’ families financially qualify for federal support.

I met the clinic staff (including my Conibear compatriot Beth Upton, the ARNP) and the student helpers and tried to remember if my school had anything like the health center. I don’t think it did. I think kids who didn’t have pediatricians, insurance and parents who could pay just didn’t get regular health services – physical, mental or dental. We know health status and access to care is a predictor for learning success. Odd that it took us so long to figure it out.

At the King County Board of Health meeting today we voted to regulate this new world of electronic cigarettes much like we regulate the world of old-fashioned cigarettes.  No selling e-cigs to minors, no distributing coupons for free e-cigs via the mail, and (with some controversy) no using e-cigs in places you can’t use conventional smokes.

Several people emailed me a few came to testify before the vote that e-cigs help them and their loved ones avoid inhaling all the carcinogens associated with tobacco cigarettes.  Some argue that e-cigs can be a “harm reduction” tool for smokers who just can’t quit.  That seemed a compelling reason to not ban e-cigs totally, although, several countries have done so. Instead we focused on keeping e-cigs out of the hands of minors and on not backsliding on the decades-long effort to keep cigarette smoking from appearing normal and cool. The “no vaping in public places” has garnered the most opposition and an amendment to strike that prohibition from the legislation failed on a close vote.  It may very well be that the vapor people exhale when using e-cigs is harmless, but the Food & Drug Administration hasn’t done formal testing of the devices yet.  Even if second-hand vape proves to be harmless, the image of people smoking comfortably, even if it’s a ceramic vaporizer fashioned to look like a regular cigarette, isn’t something we want coming back into fashion.

Having said that, I don’t have a great answer for the vapers forced outside to vape. If I were them I wouldn’t want to hang out with the smokers 25 feet from the door.

On another note, the disposable e-cigs come with a lithium or other style of battery contained inside.  Proper disposal of these would be nice after people have exhausted the advertised 30 puffs. These shouldn’t just go to landfill.

If you made a wildly popular, wildly profitable product for decades, but then saw your profits slide due to regulation and taxation aimed at decreasing use of your product, what would you do? You’d adapt and find a new way to package your product, right?

Wednesday we had the first meeting of the Seattle-King County Board of Health’s Tobacco Policy Committee where we talked about our own need to adapt when it comes to tobacco products. It’s time to amend local polices and regulations to better capture how the tobacco industry has changed after the big tobacco lawsuit settlements of the past couple of decades and to address where we’ve failed to change smoking rates.  While we’ve made great strides in pushing down smoking rates among adults, those declines don’t show up evenly among all demographic groups and youth smoking rates in King County have gone up in recent surveys. However, more disturbing are the new ways the tobacco industry has developed to leave cigarettes behind and enter a new “cool” world of nicotine delivery.

The bottom line: when you’re on the ropes, make something fruity or minty, and make it like candy.

Camel started test-marketing Orbs, Strips and Sticks in 2008 in three U.S. cities, including Portland.  The Orbs look pretty much like Tic Tacs, but they’re pellets of finely ground tobacco with mint or cinnamon flavoring. Same concept for the Camel Sticks and Strips.  So, you drop the carcinogens in the tar and chemicals in cigarette smoke, but you still have the zoom and addictive draw of the nicotine. Also new to the U.S. line-up of smokeless options are “snus,” on the market now from at least Camel and Marlboro. Snus (the word is Swedish for tobacco) come in a cool little tin, kind of like buying a tin of mints.  In fact you can find Camel and Marlboro snus in minty flavors, as well as standard “tobacco” flavors. Here the tobacco companies have removed the major barrier to chewing tobacco – the spit factor.  (Cue high school memories of tripping over some guy’s abandoned spit cup in the cafeteria.) Camel started test marketing snus packets in 2006 in Portland.  (What is it about Portland and the market for new nicotine delivery systems?)

Along with these new products come changes to existing ones.  For instance, while rolling papers are age-old, kiwi-strawberry flavored ones packaged to look like fruit wrap snacks are a new entry into the market.  Where Skoal used to come in just one flavor – shredded tobacco flavor?  — it now comes in cherry and apple. Swisher Sweets amid other mini-cigars come in an ever-expanding array of fruit flavors.  Grape strikes me especially repellent, but mango isn’t far behind.

There’s been very little health testing done in the U.S. on any of these products so far. Some harm reduction advocates say that any move away from cigarettes is a step in the right direction. Other researchers say that while we may see less lung cancer from Orbs and snus, we don’t know whether we’ll see the same kind of mouth cancers from dissolving pellets or strips, or from snus compared to conventional “chew.”  For some reason snus increases the chances of developing pancreatic cancer. Ironically, while the tobacco companies imported the snus concept from Europe, snus has been banned in European Union countries since 2004 over concerns about carcinogens.

While all these products no doubt are developed for adults with expendable cash to support nicotine habits, there’s little doubt the cute tins, bright colors and flavors will appeal to kids and young adults. Even if cancer rates decline, the addictive quality of the nicotine remains and is reason enough to make these products less attractive to young people and less easy to obtain. One idea is simply to ban flavored tobacco. Does that go too far? It would be great to tax these products in King County in order to make the expense the deterrent. Unfortunately, we’re preempted by state law from assessing a local-level tobacco tax.   If you have ideas for the Seattle-King County Board of Health’s Tobacco Policy Committee, send them and I’ll bring them to the meetings.

The good news is that this number is slightly lower than last year’s total. The bad news is that it’s still 2,759.

Tonya and Dan from my office participated, as well. We compared notes this morning on what can be a physically trying and sometimes moving experience. An odd part of the experience is the tension between counting and not counting. You’re up in the middle of the night and jazzed about playing a small part in ending homelessness by helping to measure the extent of the problem. So, you want to do some counting! However, it means the system of shelters, services, and housing might just be working if you find no one to count. It’s a weird contradiction.

Many thanks to the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness for their organizing prowess. Big thanks to the crew from the Aloha Inn that had me along as part of their team. We combed an area of the green belt on the west side of Queen Anne. Along the way they reminded me of the Aloha’s great model of self-governance and the important role living there can play in someone’s recovery and progression to greater self-sufficiency. Maybe we need more Aloha Inns.

The public development authority model for coordination of action is interesting and works well for Pike Place Market and the International District. Each of the other PDA’s owns property, though, and that’s the bedrock of their reason for being. We need a central coordinating committee for Pioneer Square.

“About 6 million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, these people described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid: no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay. Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent in the past two years. About one in 50 Americans lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card.”

One in 50 is an incredible statistic. The article states later that the number rises to 1 in 17 in Yakima County. Some of the rise in numbers is due to states like Washington getting smarter and more aggressive in signing people up for food stamp help. The numbers are over-whelming, though, and further drive home the difficulty of speedily “correcting” the economy. We need jobs so people can ditch food stamps, right? Seattle wants new, green jobs. Professional jobs, construction jobs, research jobs, manufacturing jobs. In order to create jobs, companies need to see demand for consumption of their product. Or do companies just need tax breaks?

“ ‘This is craziness,’ said Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., the ranking minority member of a House panel on welfare policy. ‘We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government.’

He added: ‘You don’t improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes’ so small businesses will create more jobs.”

Part of me believes Linder is correct in that national and state tax policy could use an overhaul, but lowering taxes has become an easy thing for national-level figures to espouse. Maybe we should lower local and state business taxes “so small businesses will create more jobs.” The problem is small businesses also need adequate garbage service, a dependable power supply, clean water, good sewers, buses and trains shuttling around their workers, responsive police and fire services, high quality schools producing skilled, smart workers, and a safety net that strives to take care of the people who can’t yet or never will be successfully employed or fully independent.

Even without lowering taxes we’ll be cutting city services further this year. Mayor McGinn’s announcement today of mayoral review of all new hires (essentially a hiring freeze), mayoral review of every amended or new contract, and trimming higher level staff numbers by 200 won’t get us to the point of needing less tax revenue, just a little closer to the balance point for current income.

So exactly what is the right mix of tax breaks and consumer confidence that will get more people jobs and fewer people needing food stamps?

The Rainier Valley Food Bank had their external storage container cleaned out by thieves Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. They had enough food inside the warehouse (and I use that term loosely as it’s a tiny space) to serve the regular Wednesday morning crowd of seniors and disabled people, but Saturday — the day after tomorrow — low- income individuals and families will line-up for help making it through Thanksgiving week, the week of giving thanks for bounty and cooperation. The food bank is accepting donations 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 4205 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118. If you aren’t able to help Rainier Valley Food Bank make up the loss, maybe consider helping out the food bank in your part of town. Overall Seattle’s food banks report 50 percent to 100 percent increases in the numbers of people lining up for help. The Mayor and Council made sure next year’s City budget maintains City support for food banks, but no one’s budgets anticipate grand-scale thievery from food banks.

I and my staff volunteered at the Rainier Valley Food Bank earlier this year on a Wednesday. They run a great operation. No food bank deserves to be ripped off. It’s hard to imagine the thinking behind the crime. Taking the entire contents of the storage container isn’t about an individual who is hungry. Will they re-sell the bags of rice, the boxes of pasta, the cans of tuna? I’m clearly missing the master- mind strategy of it all.

And then we put on white lab coats and blue paper booties in order to enter the research lab and look through microscopes at real stem cells — the controversial little things the Bush Administration was ambivalent about and the Obama Administration has more openly embraced for research. We looked at basic, run-of-the-mill stem cells. It was, frankly, a little difficult to figure out what we were seeing under the microscope.

Then we looked at stem cells that had been made into cardiac cells. And they were beating. Under the scope it looked like a light green sea of cells with waves moving through at a regular pulse.

Weird. Why? How are they beating? What’s telling them to beat?

If the lab coats, booties and cells are meant to impress and distract from the more difficult land use questions, they succeeded. We have the first discussion of the UW proposal at the Planning Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee meeting Wednesday, September 23, at 9 a.m. in Council Chambers.