As a bit of background, the City of Seattle contracts with two companies – Waste Management and CleanScapes – to do residential and commercial garbage and recycling pick ups.  The great, strong people who come by your house or building weekly to pick up what you throw away aren’t City of Seattle employees, instead they are employees of Waste Management and, depending upon their specific job, they are members of either Teamsters 117 (recycling) or Teamsters 174 (garbage). The Teamsters want the salaries of recycling truck drivers and waste truck drivers to be on the same level.  The recycling workers and WM have been in negotiations for several months, but talks recently broke off and the recyclers struck. The garbage drivers are respecting the strike. 

There will be plenty of scape-goating and hot tempers as garbage piles up and employee bank accounts deplete, but be assured that almost no one truly wants a strike. Maybe you have a few over-eager types on each side, but most employees want to work and most managers want smooth relationships that allow the work to get done.

Waste Management, set to incur fines of more than a $1 million a day from the city for failure to perform (the contract requires WM to pick up during strikes with a seven-day grace period), has brought in replacement workers to try and scoop up at least some of the garbage from bigger generators like hospitals and restaurants. WM started running ads this week to hire permanent replacements for all 153 striking recycling drivers. That’s a sharp knife jab at the striking drivers.

If you check out the “comments” on The Seattle Times article this morning about WM’s replacement driver efforts you see a huge number of people bashing unions and the striking workers. That’s too bad. This economy is tough for workers without a white collar and tougher when you’re out there on your own. Collective bargaining represents the best tool for employees and management to hammer out differences.

Exercising leadership means controlling emotion and getting all parties back to the table. We all benefit from a well-bargained fair deal.  

In the meantime, a few suggestions regarding garbage and recycling during the strike:

• If your pick-up is normally Tuesday, set out your bins out next Tuesday. That’s the seven day grace period.
• Wednesday customers should set out your waste on Wednesday and to leave it out through Thursday.
• After that pick-ups should occur per normal schedule.

Will it be picked up on normal schedule even if the strike continues? We’ll see. That’s a lot of replacement drivers. I’d rather see that expense and organizing energy put into negotiations. I think I’ll be headed over to the South Transfer Station this weekend. During the strike you may take up to 6 bags of garbage or yard waste to either of the City transfer stations for free.   That option continues until collection service is fully restored.

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.

Most of the stuff you and I see around town is unwanted and poorly executed. Sometimes the swirl of letters is a message intended for a certain group. Sometimes the damage is cleaned away with a rag, but more often the property owner pays out of his or her pocket for a professional team to clean, repaint or replace (in the case of etched or scratched windows).

Every once in a while, though, a piece appears that makes me hope the cleaners don’t come too soon.  The piece that’s been up a few weeks now on the empty building at 2nd Ave. S. and S. Main mixes a 20th century masterpiece with urban neon shapes. Is it one artist?  Two?  Who’s idea was it to recreate Picasso’s Guernica?  Why?  Is it a statement on the current wars?  Is it no statement at all, merely striking in its sharp agony? Did the artist recreate all of Guernica before the neon overlay?

I know I should maintain a uniformly dim view of graffiti, but I look forward to seeing this wall every day.

(click to enlarge)