Suddenly, we have less than half the year ahead of us. The good news is we’ve accomplished a great deal. The bad news is this is when I look at my wall calendar I realize we’re almost at the August hiatus which means we’re almost to the budget break which means we’re almost to the end of the year. Cripes!

My goals as Council President have been to 1) not screw up anything permanently (the general elected person’s version of the medical world’s “do no harm” oath); 2) keep the Council moving forward on our action priorities; and 3) do my part to keep the city focused on delivering service in a high quality way while we wrestle with the complex, knotty questions that invariably pop up despite the fact they aren’t listed anywhere on the action agenda. (Arenas, historic streetcars and profit-making ziplines, anyone?)

I may be biased (OK, quite biased), but I think the Council (and the city staff who help us) did pretty well by our priorities in the first half of the year. Among other accomplishments:

• The Third Avenue Initiative is underway coordinating city department work to clean up and better maintain Third Avenue through Downtown. Councilmember Rasmussen knows every inch of Third Ave. at this point.

• Construction of the First Hill Street Car is underway with the extension into Pioneer Square assured and the extension to Aloha Street under review. Councilmember Rasmussen has pushed this, as well, with Councilmember Conlin doing his part at the Sound Transit Board.

• We adopted an administration and finance plan for effectively using the Families & Education Levy funds approved by voters last fall. Councilmember Burgess spearheaded that work.

• The first Neighborhood Greenway opened through Wallingford this spring. Councilmember Bagshaw’s middle name is “Greenway.”

• We worked with allies in other cities and the state legislature to quell costly changes in Business and Occupation Tax collection and have launched work with allies on a better approach to simplification for businesses. This has been a big one for me.

• Squeaking in just at the start of July we adopted a Strategic Plan for Seattle City Light after thousands of hours of work by volunteers and staff. Councilmember O’Brien carried this over the line after multiple years of effort by Councilmember Harrell.

• Earlier this week we gave the final committee-level nod to asking voters to approve a bond sale for financing replacement of the central seawall. Councilmember Godden chairs this special committee.

We have a list of big items ahead of us before the December break – final decisions on new housing, zoning, parks and streets for the Yesler Terrace neighborhood (Councilmember Licata has the sharpest pencil reviewing this proposal); the SODO arena proposal; new zoning for South Lake Union; final rules on a rental housing licensing and inspection program; and more. We’ll receive the concept plan for the future Seattle waterfront later this month. We’ll spend October and November taking apart and reassembling the budget for 2013, including a probable shortfall of approximately $30 million.

We’ve also taken up brief conversations a few readers will think less important. I’m an optimist, though. I think we can review and act on something as detailed as the Seattle City Light Strategic Plan and have brain space available to consider a resolution on the potential impacts of coal trains chugging through Seattle.

I am disappointed to not have progress to report in one particular area – the City’s response to the United States Department of Justice’s December report on cases of excessive use of force by Seattle Police. While negotiations are currently the work of the Mayor and City Attorney, the crafting of new policies and the necessary staff and budget changes are of concern to all Councilmembers and rated as the Council’s highest priority for this year.

I believe the sooner the City reaches a fair agreement with the DOJ, the better for our police officers and the greater community. Ongoing pokes and disagreements about the validity of certain statistics cited in the DOJ findings do nothing to move us forward. Instead, the delays, intentional leaks to media, and resistance to change allow doubt and resentment to fester. 

It’s time for a reasonable negotiated agreement that puts Seattle on track to developing and living the policies and procedures, the training, the supervision and the accountability our officers and community deserve. 

There will be a price tag for making changes. We should calculate the real cost of reasonable, negotiated changes and then take responsibility for the difficult decisions we’ll need to make to pay for these changes.

We can do this. We can use this difficult opportunity to elevate Seattle to the top tier of urban policing. I hope to be able to blog soon that we have. We have less than half the year to go to get started.

If you missed it, here’s the link. The best part is the string of comments that follow from Beaconites more than happy to be over-looked by Seattle Magazine. First Place goes to the commenter who notes sarcastically he or she would write more often if the broadband on Beacon Hill worked consistently and says wrapping up: “Gotta go grab some yummy Philiphino [sic] food served up by a cross-dressing broadway [sic] show tunes singing waiter.”

Careful. You’ll make Amazon regret their move.

NPAC is wrapping tonight, but I’m committed to neighborhood planning and the development of the update system being community driven. I look forward to the McGinn team bringing a fresh perspective on community engagement and to ownership of plan updates and implementation. The plans remain the greatest tool for connecting people to each other in neighborhoods and for shaping how our neighborhoods change over time.

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.

In a nutshell, the proposal delivered to Council would take the rules in place in Southeast Seattle since 2006 and expand them out to the whole city. You would be eligible to build a backyard cottage if:

1. You’re in single-family zoning;You have a lot that is at least 4,000 square feet in area;
2. You haven’t (and won’t ultimately) exceed the 35 percent lot coverage limit;
3. Your cottage wouldn’t cover more than 40 percent of your backyard; and
4. Your proposed cottage doesn’t exceed 800 square feet total.

There are also rules about height that connect with the width of the lot (you could get up to 23 feet if you have a lot at least 40 feet wide) and another that would cap the number of new ones at 50 per year.

So far I’ve been on three detached accessory dwelling unit tours, two in Southeast of newly built cottages and one in North Seattle of cottages that have been around for decades. I have approximately six to see in Southeast before I will have seen the whole crop of cottages that have sprung up since 2006. So far, some are fantastic looking, some are less fantastic (perhaps mediocre) looking. Kind of like homes in general. The ones with the biggest visual impact for me so far have been the full two-story cottages. I have to admit – they look big. Maybe too big? Maybe 800 square feet is too much? Maybe 23 feet is too high? Maybe it’s just those two numbers together?

The proposal was unveiled to the Council at this morning’s Planning, Land Use & Neighborhoods Committee. The committee plan going forward is for a follow-up discussion about the proposal at PLUNC’s September 9 meeting, then a public hearing Council Chambers the evening of September 15. The earliest possible date for a committee vote would be Sept. 23. I don’t know if we’ll be ready to vote by then. We’ll see what happens in committee on Sept. 9 and then at the public hearing.

OK, and yes, I did insist on driving the van for the tour we did in Southeast yesterday. I did, I confess, scrape the side of the van when turning to enter the Sea Park Garage Downtown. It’s a big van and a tight turn and I was focused on not hitting the yellow pole in front. Instead I scraped the side of the door. Oops. Sorry, taxpayers.

This is the greatest interactive public art project I’ve seen in a quite a while. Check it out.

We knew last year when we finalized the structure for updating the neighborhood plans starting with three neighborhoods in Southeast Seattle that it would be tough going. It’s tough being first in a new initiative. We’ve never updated the plans so we’re all learning from successes and mistakes. That’s not comforting if you’re in the first neighborhood in the first wave of updates. We also knew it would be tough going because, frankly, there are oceans of ideological and personality differences separating many of the most ardent activists in Southeast. Wounds from the community discussion on community renewal are still open and raw. Distrust of the mayor bleeds into distrust of city staff. Distrust of new development and added density means a sea of skeptics. We need skeptics, we need watchdogs. However, sitting back with arms folded won’t make change go away.

Neighborhood people we saw at Othello/New Holly Saturday want more communication and they want more say in shaping the meetings. That’s good and the city should jump at that desire for connection and ownership. It needs to happen in a way that respects all the new voices that are coming to the process by way of the tremendous outreach work by the Department of Neighborhoods. I can’t imagine the neighborhoods will feel any differently at North Rainier or North Beacon Hill, both of which have town meetings coming up fast (North Rainier on Saturday, May 16, 9 a.m., at the Northwest African American Museum and North Beacon on Saturday, May 30, 9 a.m. at El Centro de la Raza).

Russ had what I consider to be a fantastic job serving the city with information and he made the most of it. As is often the case we learn so much about someone after they’re gone. The Queen Anne/Magnolia News ran a great tribute to Russ detailing his achievements and his life as a traveler, calling his life “picaresque.”

I’m here as a presenter with the Seattle Planning Commission, Puget Sound Regional Council and Port of Seattle to talk about Seattle-area efforts to save blue collar jobs. The panel discussion was this morning. I think it went well. No one walked out mid-way.

Now I’m trolling the other panels. Neighborhood planning, neighborhood character, neighborhood health, neighborhoods for artists…. It’s basically a big planning candy store here. I’m hoping to bring back great ideas.

You can take a look at the powerpoint presentation we gave here.

“At the end of the day, cities are whole and not accumulations of individual neighborhoods.”

This may be the toughest concept to drive home during the neighborhood plan updates. Wallingford works as Wallingford only if all our neighborhoods make up a whole, healthy city in which people can hatch safe, affordable, sustainable lives.