day : 15/12/2011 12 results

More awards to report tonight: During last night’s 34th District Democrats holiday party at The Hall at Fauntleroy, the district’s annual awards were presented, and local elected officials were on hand to help honor them. 34th DDs’ webmaster Bill Schrier shared the photo – here’s who’s in it, and what the winners won:

Pictured are, Left to right: Tim Nuse, Chair, Lloyd Hara (King County Assessor), Steven J. Drew (Thurston Co. Assessor), Marcee Stone (E-Board Member of the Year), Joe McDermott (King County Council member), Kari Feeney (Rising Star Award), Les Treall, Jackie Dupras (Cherisse Luxa Lifetime Achievement Award), Steve Butts, Tamsen Spengler (Member of the Year), Lisa Plymate, Tom Rasmussen (Seattle City Council member). Kari, Les, Steve, Tamsen and Lisa are members of the Diversity Committee, which received the outstanding Committee Award.

The text of each winner’s citation can be read here.

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West Seattle Christmas lights: 2-week project

December 15, 2011 8:32 pm

| 6 COMMENTS

| Holidays | West Seattle Christmas lights | West Seattle news

We found out about tonight’s featured Christmas lights – 4152 46th SW – in the comment section following an earlier spotlight. DD said her husband, Duane Davis, started work on the display around Thanksgiving, and was expecting to finish last weekend. So we checked it out tonight and added it to the West Seattle Christmas lights map:

View West Seattle Christmas lights, 2011 in a larger map

You can find the map on the West Seattle Holidays page any time. If you just want to scroll through photos of lights we’ve featured, use the archive page for this “category” of WSB stories – go here.

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West Seattle schools: Explorer West, Chief Sealth award-winners

December 15, 2011 7:13 pm

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| West Seattle news | West Seattle people | West Seattle schools

Two schools are celebrating award-winning students’ arts achievements tonight. First, from Explorer West Middle School (WSB sponsor):

The photo showing some of the Explorer West seventh-graders in the drama program is from Amy, and the report of two student honorees is from Alice:

On Monday night, two seventh grade students from West Seattle’s Explorer West Middle School won prestigious awards from the ACT Theater Young Playwrights Program.

For the past ten weeks, EWMS seventh graders have been working with ACT Theater Young Playwrights Program in the schools. Across Seattle 400 students submitted plays, in hopes of their play being selected for a production at ACT Theater. EWMS was one of two middle schools invited to participate in a mostly high-school-based contest with sixteen schools in Puget Sound, The Young Playwrights Festival. The top 47 plays were honored with an honorable mention and eight were selected for a full production at ACT THeater.

Winning in the top eight was seventh-grade student and lifelong West Seattle resident, twelve-year-old Finnley Kafer for her play, “The Trial of the Wolf and the Three Little Pigs”. Her play will be produced March 15 through 17 at ACT Theater.

Earning an Honorable mention was seventh-grader Jackson Rockowitz for his play, “The Epic Story of Snuffles the Goat Farmer.”

Meantime, Chief Sealth International High School student Pazuzu Jindrich, 15, won a contest for her banner design commemorating Human Rights Day (which was December 10th).

The folks at PugetSoundOff.org held the contest and say Pazuzu was chosen the winner from among more than 125 entries! Listen to her explain it in this short video clip:

As you can see in the video – Pazuzu won a Kindle for her award-winning design.

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West Seattle holiday giving: Nucor pitches in at SWYFS

December 15, 2011 4:31 pm

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| Delridge | West Seattle news

Busy afternoon at Southwest Youth and Family Services in North Delridge – more than 80 families are picking up holiday food boxes, distributed with help from nearby Nucor Steel. From left in the next photo, from Nucor, are Shelby Stong, Darrell Wheeler, and Scot McSwane.

425 people are getting holiday food thanks to this distribution, which is the result of Nucor employees choosing to donate their annual community-service project to SWYFS. They collected donations, we’re told, through an intracompany safety-improvement competition.

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West Seattle road work update: California SW resurfacing finished

December 15, 2011 2:59 pm

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| Transportation | West Seattle news

As of 2:30 pm – a couple hours ahead of schedule – the California SW resurfacing between SW Findlay and SW Graham is finished, and the heavy equipment’s gone; just some sign pickup left to be done. If you haven’t driven it yet, here’s what they did: Scraped off the old asphalt on the travel lanes and put down new asphalt; the center turn lane and outside parking zones were left as they were. Rather than big jobs like last year’s Fauntleroy Way overhaul, this year we’ve seen smaller spot-paving/resurfacing work, a block or two or three at a time

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Newest West Seattle school-capacity proposal: Open Boren, and…

December 15, 2011 1:15 pm

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| West Seattle news | West Seattle schools

Though a mostly final proposal isn’t expected until the January 4th Seattle School Board meeting, we do know now what Seattle Public Schools is suggesting for relieving the crowding at six elementary schools in West Seattle. Their proposal is in the PowerPoint presented last night at the board’s Committee of the Whole meeting (see it here). Pages 16 and 17 are the heart of what’s proposed here, broken out by middle-school “service area.” The booed-at-last-month’s-community-meeting (WSB coverage here) suggestions about splitting off kindergarten or 5th graders appear to have been scrapped. But reopening Boren (the former “junior high” at 5950 Delridge Way SW) as the temporary home of a STEM (science/technology/engineering/math) option elementary is on the list. Portables are suggested for Gatewood, Lafayette, Schmitz Park, and West Seattle elementaries, but not Arbor Heights and Roxhill. From the above-linked presentation:

We have a message out to West Seattle’s new school-board rep Marty McLaren, asking for comment. The official schedule calls for the final “short-term capacity management” plan – this is only the first phase, covering next school year – to be introduced at the January 4th school-board meeting, and then put to a vote two weeks later. (A longer-term plan, involving reopening/building more school/s, will be hashed out next year – and that’s when the district proposes figuring out where the new STEM elementary would be permanently located.)

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Thursday midday notes: More half-price trees; tonight’s highlights

December 15, 2011 12:45 pm

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| West Seattle news | WS miscellaneous

MORE HALF-PRICE TREES: In addition to the Holy Rosary School lot (41st/Dakota), which cut tree prices in half starting yesterday (as reported here), the new Son-In-Law Tree Farm lot (California/Charlestown) has just halved its prices too, they called to say. (Our complete list of local Christmas tree sellers is on the WSB West Seattle Holidays page.)

TONIGHT’S HIGHLIGHTS: Busy morning, so we never got to publish our customary daily preview. Here are a few quick notes, though, for tonight: It’s the second-to-last Shop Late Thursday in The Junction before Christmas, with participating shops open till 9 pm … The first of several “Blue Christmas/Holidays”-type services in our area is 7 pm tonight at Westside Unitarian Universalist Congregation … Chief Sealth International High School and Denny International Middle School jazz bands are in concert, 7 pm, CSIHS auditorium … The Omilero fundraiser at OutWest Bar is tonight at 6 (as previewed here earlier this week) … Live music tonight at Avalon, with Pourquoi Pas, 6:30-9 pm (drink specials too).

TAKE A HIKE FRIDAY AFTERNOON! School’s out early, the forecast says it’ll be partly sunny … tomorrow might be a great day for a guided eco-hike with the Nature Consortium. 1 pm in the West Duwamish Greenbelt, meet at 14th/Holly. Free! RSVP to nancy@naturec.org.

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ARCpoint Labs: Welcoming a new West Seattle Blog sponsor

December 15, 2011 11:31 am

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| Health | West Seattle businesses | West Seattle news

Today we welcome one of our newest WSB sponsors, ARCpoint Labs. As is customary with new sponsors, we offer the opportunity for them to tell you about their business, and here’s what ARCpoint wants you to know:

(From left, ARCpoint Labs’ Jay Smith, Larry Rosok, La’chelle Singleton)
“Why ARCpoint? Accurate, Reliable and Confidential – ARCpoint Labs is here in West Seattle, doesn’t make you wait to get service in our clinic, and provides results quickly.

Located just off Delridge Way and SW Andover Street, ARCpoint Labs offers a comprehensive array of high-quality drug, alcohol, DNA, and background screening services to businesses as well as families and individuals seeking screening.

Have you ever wondered if someone is really your child, your brother, your granddaughter? DNA testing can provide those answers. ARCpoint provides DNA testing that provides accurate and conclusive results. Legal DNA results can be used for court cases, immigration purposes or just for your own information.

ARCpoint also conducts drug testing using a variety of specimen types, such as urine, hair, nails and saliva. Often people think that a drug test is a drug test. Not true! For example many people do not realize that the standard drug test does not cover many prescription drugs. ARCpoint will match your needs with the screening that is best for you or your company.

Whether you are an employer looking to reduce risk, reduce absenteeism, or improve safety for your employees and customers or if you are an individual that needs drug testing services, we will work with you to determine the screening that will work best for you.

ARCpoint, for your workplace, your family – your life.” Find ARCpoint Labs online by going here, or call (206) 504-1681.

We thank ARCpoint Labs for sponsoring independent, community-collaborative neighborhood news on WSB; find our current sponsor team listed in directory format here, and find info on joining the team by going here.

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Scam alert: E-mails that look local and legit, but aren’t – PSE, and now King County

December 15, 2011 10:44 am

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| Safety | West Seattle news | West Seattle online

Just got an e-mail pretending to be from “King County Ecommerce” regarding property taxes. We are 100 percent sure – even before we check – that it’s bogus. So we wanted to warn you not to open it, if you get it too! The telltale flaw: It is formatted just like an e-mail we received yesterday pretending to be from “Puget Sound Energy,” which definitely wasn’t, and led to a warning from PSE itself. The dangerous part about these e-mails is the attached zip file. DON’T OPEN IT. Ahead, read the alert that PSE sent out late yesterday (and, ADDED 2:52 PM, a warning from King County about the new one):Read More

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Car bumps building after 35th/Barton hit-run crash

December 15, 2011 9:13 am

| 3 COMMENTS

| West Seattle news | WS breaking news

Busy morning for emergency responders. We checked this out right after the Fauntleroy shed fire. From the scene and the scanner, police believe that this car was hit by another vehicle that left the scene, just hard enough to override the parking brake and send it rolling onto the sidewalk and up to the front of this commercial building just south of 35th/Barton (map).

No injuries and no serious damage – the car hit the mailbox post and took out a few bricks on a planter in front of the business’s front window. (Editor’s note: We’ve blurred the plate on the top photo, per WSB policy on faces/addresses/plate #s.)

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Update: Extension cord blamed for Fauntleroy shed fire

December 15, 2011 8:18 am

| 1 COMMENT

| West Seattle fires | West Seattle news | WS breaking news

8:18 AM: More Seattle Fire units are on their way to the 8600 block of Fauntleroy right now. This started as a call about a “shed fire” and moments ago, crews on the scene called for a “full response” because it’s apparently spread to the house, as well as to a neighbor’s shed. We’ll be on scene shortly. ~~The traffic camera above shows the emergency vehicles, just south of the south Lincoln Park parking lot.~~

8:33 AM UPDATE: On scene – northbound Fauntleroy Way traffic is blocked, ~~as the “live” traffic-cam image above shows~~, but some southbound traffic (toward the ferry dock) is getting through. Police are there to help direct traffic. We haven’t seen damage to the house in front of the shed (seconds after we added this, the incident commander confirmed this), but the shed itself is significantly burned.

No report of injuries; investigators are on the way to figure out how it started.

8:51 AM: Traffic moving again. We’ve removed the traffic-cam image since the blockage is gone. We’ll update this later when there’s information about how the fire started; for now, we’ve added a photo from the scene (by WSB’s Patrick Sand), as well as a photo (courtesy Amy) showing the smoke, which was widely visible for a while (we even got one sighting report from Vashon, across the Sound).

9:29 AM: Added new photo atop this story – taken by Kristi while the shed was engulfed in flames.

10:59 AM: SFD spokesperson Kyle Moore has information on the fire’s cause and damage:

The renter of the property was not home when the fire began. A Seattle Fire Investigator determined this was an accidental fire that began from an extension cord that ran from the house to the detached shed. Several extension cords were strung together to power a portable heater inside the shed.

An SFD Investigators estimates $17,000 in total damage. The breakdown of the damage estimate is $8,000 to the shed, $5,000 to the contents of the shed and $4,000 to the exterior of the garage.

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West Seattle traffic alert: Emergency response on the bridge

December 15, 2011 8:14 am

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| West Seattle news | West Seattle traffic alerts

(Thanks to Dana Rambo, first car behind the roadblock just after 8 am)
If you haven’t left yet, note that traffic is worse than usual right now. Fire units have a medic-response call on the eastbound West Seattle Bridge parallel with Admiral. And at the east end of the bridge, if you are heading to southbound I-5, there might be some distraction from an emergency call on the northbound side right at the bridge exit. (Thanks to everybody who tipped us on this)

8:48 AM: As far as we can tell, the medic units have cleared.

12:36 PM: We asked SFD about the incident. From spokesperson Kyle Moore: “At 7:58 we received a 911 call reporting a female in her late 60’s who was unconscious but breathing. She was inside a black car on the right side of Eastbound West Seattle Freeway in front of the steel plant. At 8:14, Medic 32 transported the patient to Harborview Medical Center.” He didn’t have information on her condition, though.

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