What’s really next for The Triangle? SW Dist. Council wants to know

March 4, 2011 1:55 am
|    Comments Off on What’s really next for The Triangle? SW Dist. Council wants to know
 |   Southwest District Council | West Seattle news

(One of the graphics shown at last month’s Triangle open house)
From this week’s Southwest District Council meeting: SWDC members say they’re not clear about where city planning for the West Seattle Triangle‘s future really stands, despite last month’s community open house, and their own city briefing days before it. So they want the project’s lead city planners Susan McLain and Robert Scully to return before the council and outline exactly what they’re doing next with feedback from those meetings, as well as with the plan itself, and what they’ll be telling city leaders. SWDC members also would like to talk with Councilmember Sally Clark, whose Committee on the Built Environment would theoretically eventually consider the results of the Triangle process. SWDC co-chair Susan Melrose of the West Seattle Junction Association and past co-chair Erica Karlovits of the Junction Neighborhood Organization also questioned whether the Triangle planning process had adequate community representation/participation and had truly resulted in consensus.

Another topic of concern for the council – the ongoing changes in the Department of Neighborhoods, which (among other things) provides staff assistance for district councils (whose members are all volunteers) – more after the jump:

The council also is disquieted about the still-unsettled district-coordinator situation. For years, its liaison and assigned staffer had been the Southwest District coordinator, Stan Lock. The mayor’s original budget proposal last year proposed closing the district’s Neighborhood Service Office in The Junction, which would have left Lock’s job up in the air. SWDC (and others) protested. The office stayed – but Lock was transferred to another part of the city, and because of some job cuts in the coordinators’ ranks, they were reorganized into regional groups.

Originally, there were to be four coordinators serving the South Region, including the Southwest and Delridge District Councils. But then longtime Delridge District coordinator Ron Angeles announced his retirement, and that left three coordinators for the South Region. At the last SWDC meeting, the coordinators said they would rotate council responsibilities; Steve Louie attended Wednesday’s meeting and said there will now be three coordinators, with no immediate plans announced to replace Angeles, so that means the plans worked out at the start of the year for splitting the regional duties would have to be revisited. However it is resolved, it was agreed that a lot of institutional knowledge in West Seattle is being lost with Lock’s transfer and Angeles’s retirement, and the SWDC is concerned about that.

ALKI CAR-FREE DAY BRIEFING: As previously reported, this year the “car-free day,” Seattle Summer Streets, will again follow the West Seattle 5K (presented by the West Seattle High School PTSA, with WSB among its co-sponsors) run/walk; the 5K is at 9:20 am May 22nd, with Summer Streets following 11 am-5 pm, so Alki SW will be closed all day long. SDOT reps showed the info-card they’ll be distributing, and asked SWDC reps if they had any “ideas” for activities that day; council co-chair Tony Fragada from the Alki Community Council offered one idea – he suggested SDOT should be briefing his group directly.

The Southwest District Council meets first Wednesday of most months, 7 pm, South Seattle Community College board room, public always welcome.

No Replies to "What's really next for The Triangle? SW Dist. Council wants to know"

    Sorry, comment time is over.