December 28th, 2009
This piece on Pioneer Square from Knute Berger last week in Crosscut may not have received many hits because we're in the twilight of the year when many people are tuning out for a while, but it's worth revisiting. I'll be working a bit in 2010 on how to raise Pioneer Square's
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October 8th, 2009
Last night's public hearing at Whitman Middle School (Crown Hill) on the proposed 2010 city budget was, for a budget hearing, sparsely attended. Maybe our outreach wasn't what it could have been. Maybe people just know there's no extra money to claim for their cause. In fact, among the pleas last night
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Posted: October 8th, 2009 under
Budget and Economic Development.
Tags:
Budget
April 13th, 2009
This has been a somewhat painful, but instructive few days with regard to the budget briefings by the Mayor's staff. I wasn't part of the small team in the meetings this past week, but I wasn't against the idea of doing advance, small-group discussions with the Mayor's staff about their initial ideas
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Posted: April 13th, 2009 under
Budget and Economic Development.
Tags:
Budget
March 27th, 2009
That's the new number we heard from staff last night at the public hearing on budget priorities. We will likely show a $40 million gap between what we thought we could spend this year and the amount of revenue we'll actually see. That includes a really bad fourth quarter in 2008 and
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February 26th, 2009
I attended the annual State of Downtown breakfast hosted by the Downtown Seattle Association a couple of mornings ago. The room at the Convention Center was jam packed with business people sharing glum awe over the cliff the economy had driven over. Maybe that's why a page of the DSA 2009 State
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Posted: February 26th, 2009 under
Budget and Economic Development.
Tags:
Budget
February 5th, 2009
Deep. That's the upshot from an early estimate we received this morning in the Council's Finance & Budget Committee. When we wrapped up the budget building process for 2009-2010 in November of last year, we had closed a $19 million budget gap that had opened between the Mayor finalizing his proposed budget
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October 24th, 2008
Kudos to all the people, roughly 250, who showed up for last evening's public hearing on the proposed city budget for 2009-2010. Person after person, group after group demonstrated that Seattle is a place that cares about people who are "less fortunate." Speakers encouraged more shelter space, more dental services, more food,
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Posted: October 24th, 2008 under
Budget and Economic Development.
Tags:
Budget
April 20th, 2008
This morning councilmembers received a briefing from Department of Finance staff on the projections for employment, housing stats, foreclosures, real estate activity and all the other economic indicators that go into predicting revenue to the City over the next few years. On the good side, Boeing has a healthy backlog of orders,
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Posted: April 20th, 2008 under
Budget and Economic Development.
Tags:
Budget
February 11th, 2008
If you're a civic involvement geek, this past weekend was an awesome super-charge of activity. I started Saturday with dragons and firecrackers at the ribbon cutting for the new Chinatown Gate at King St. and Fifth Ave. This has been a multi-year project to fund and build an ornate gateway into the
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