(WSB photo: Barton St. P-Patch)

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

The city’s P-Patch community garden program is maxed out for now and not expecting to grow in the near future – but not all P-Patches have waiting lists, contrary to popular belief.

That’s just some of what the Westwood-Roxhill-Arbor Heights Community Council learned Tuesday night from visiting city Department of Neighborhoods reps – including director Kathy Nyland – who came to answer questions and provide updates about some of the department’s programs.

First, as is often the case with neighborhood meetings, an update from police:

Southwest Precinct Officer John O’Neil said police have been dealing with renewed “complaints about activities in the restrooms (at Roxhill Park),” so they have assigned extra patrols there. One attendee brought up intensified neighborhood concerns about discarded drug paraphernalia, particularly needles. He said they “are addressing it.”

Police are “working hard” to catch car prowlers, he added, asked about the latest increase in that category of crime. Spikes are often the work of either juveniles or “a ring that just got out of prison,” he said, adding that the overall rate here is still “relatively low,” while acknowledging that’s no consolation if you’re the victim.”

He also was asked about last weekend’s exchange of gunfire (reported here) at the South Delridge 7-11, and whether the store had called 911. While he didn’t have specifics on this incident, he said, in general: “They call us all the time,” over much lower-level situations, even shoplifting cigarettes, he said.

Mat McBride, visiting from the Delridge Neighborhoods District Council, wondered about a stepped-up presence of uniformed police on the street, and whether that could make a different in east West Seattle. Officer O’Neil said the bicycle squad was intended to serve that purpose, but it’s lost some officers to promotions and moves. The new mobile precinct, mentioned at multiple community council meetings, should be in service before long, he said.

COMMUNITY SAFETY SURVEY: Also a fixture at community-council meetings recently, precinct research intern Jennifer Burbridge from Seattle University had an update, one day after the survey closed. 8,000 responses citywide, with almost 1,000 of them from the Southwest Precinct (West Seattle and South Park), she said, adding that almost 200 had come from WWRHAH’s territory. She says they’re hoping to announce some analysis of the survey data in early January.

WWRHAH COMMITTEE REPORTS: Rory Denovan from WWRHAH’s Roxhill Bog committee reported it was disappointing not to have heard back from Parks Superintendent Jesús Aguirre. The committee continues to try to help find solutions to the fact that drainage “improvements” in the bog a few years back have wound up draining it entirely, a problem on multiple levels.

DEPARTMENT OF NEIGHBORHOODS: After neighborhood district coordinator Kerry Wade explained everything her role entails – detailed here – the first to speak was actually from SDOT, Howard Wu, who works on neighborhood projects – such as flashing beacons, islands, traffic circles, chicanes, often obtained via city matching funds. Just that afternoon, in fact, he said he’d been in Morgan Junction checking out the grant-funded sidewalk project on California SW south of Fauntleroy.

If you are interested in city funding for a project, take a close look at which program – for example, painting a “street mural” to slow traffic isn’t necessarily right for the Neighborhood Park and Street Fund, which would eventually involve city crews, but, said Wade, neighborhood involvement would make it a “really great neighborhood project” more suited to the Neighborhood Matching Fund.

One thing in favor of the NPSF – McBride from the Delridge District Council noted that “projects that get submitted through this process do get a lot of eyes on them,” and even if not funded through NPSF, there have been instances where the city went ahead and did the project anyway. WWRHAH co-chair Eric Iwamoto added that the participation in the process “increases your standing” and credibility as projects are reviewed.

Tim Wolfe, who moved to Neighborhoods from the city budget office to take over a new role in charge of “community investment,” said that while the matching-fund program is going to be status quo for 2016, changes might be ahead for 2017, under direction of the City Council, which passed a Statement of Legislative Intent directing “a review of all grant programs,” particularly through the lenses of access and equity, and whether the process is more cumbersome than it needs to be. Watch for the opportunity to comment on all this next February through April, when the “outreach process” will kick in. This will also involve the new “participatory budgeting” pilot program initiated by outgoing City Councilmember Nick Licata, for which the rules will be written by a steering committee when it meets this month. “Right now, it’s a blank canvas … then January through June, the process, with public assemblies throughout the city.” While the intent is for youth to lead this process, the $700,000 in city dollars they’ll be allocating are not necessarily just for youth-related programs, Wolfe clarified. He added that an early task for the steering committee will be to choose a “less wonky” name for what’s now being called participatory budgeting.

From the P-Patch program, Rich McDonald offered the most-surprising information – at least, in comparison to some pervasive myths. Some of the city’s 90 P-Patches have no waiting list, he revealed, including, in the WWRHAH area, Longfellow Creek (just east of Chief Sealth International High School), and that’s one reason why they’re not expecting to add more gardens any time soon; staffing is another reason – six people are working to manage 90 gardens, and, McDonald said, “honestly, we need more staff if we’re going to work on more gardens.”

The program also runs the Market Gardens, including the popular one in High Point, run by five gardeners who live in the area, and works with the HP Bee Garden too. Yes, P-Patches have issues, he said, “social issues are in our face every day,” and for example, the Barton P-Patch gardeners are setting up meetings with SDOT and SPD to talk about some of the ones they’ve dealt with.

Asked by WWRHAH co-chair Amanda Kay Helmick to be specific about garden-related issues, McDonald ticketed off theft – from people stealing something to eat, “all the way to stealing a whole crop of basil to sell at a market,” as well as people relieving themselves in gardens where there are no public restrooms nearby.

Then it was time to hear from, and ask questions of, director Kathy Nyland. This week marked six months in the job for her; she explained that her roots are in neighborhood advocacy, when she helped get Georgetown organize. “Many people said it was a forgotten neighborhood – when I lived there, I think I cried for the first four months.” She recalled spending her own money to make photocopies to get a community meeting going, and then speculating how long it would take to get the attention of the mayor – then, Greg Nickels. “It took one call … so we said, now, what do we do?” They organized a walking tour with eight members of the then-Council showing up – “five had to ask for directions!” she laughed – and they were off and running. “We didn’t have a big ‘ask,’ but a lot of the choices the city made in the area were (undesirable).”

Helmick told Nyland that getting attention from the city is a challenge for WWRHAH and she hopes Nyland’s department will advocate for them. Nyland acknowledged that it’s difficult being on the inside, too – “it’s an onion, layer after layer after layer, and sometimes it makes you cry.”

She said her vision is for Neighborhoods to “be more responsive, a focal point of all the departments.” She hopes to help the department and its community partners “catch up with technology,” since “not everyone can be in this room” (at meetings). She voiced a hope that community councils could step up and use technology too – live-tweet from meetings, for example. (We noted at that point, via Twitter, that many councils don’t even have websites. Or, as is the case for WWRHAH currently, they have a site but no one to update it.)

Overall, “it’s been a fascinating six months,” Nyland declared.

Would the district-coordinator ranks ever get back to what they used to be – one for each of the city’s 13 “districts,” two of which are in West Seattle – before the notorious cuts of 2010?

Nyland did not seem optimistic about that, saying not everyone realizes the value and services provided by the district coordinators (who currently number nine, serving “regions” rather than districts). And at that point, the looming possibility of realigning the 13 districts with the seven new City Council districts resurfaced. Where that will go, no one yet knows, but eastern West Seattle community leaders have made it clear they will fight to keep their distinct district.

And that’s about where the meeting had to end – not because the discussion ended, but because the Southwest Library has to close at 8 sharp, and that means the meeting room events are expected to wrap at 7:45. But even as chairs were stowed and tables moved, conversation continued, generally the sign of a good meeting.

WWRHAH meets first Tuesdays, 6:15 pm, upstairs meeting room at Southwest Library.