West Seattle, Washington
01 Friday
… you see sandbags miles from the nearest river/creek. Last night we spotted several in what must be a strategic spot outside Aaron’s Bicycle Repair in Morgan Junction. Makes sense.
Quote of the day, from city councilman Richard Conlin, in the P-I, looking ahead to the hearing he’s leading tonight on “Lessons from the Windstorm.” He’s talking about how city agencies, especially Seattle City Light, handled the storm’s aftermath, including the outages that left so many of us without power for so long. And he appropriately spotlights the fact that so many of us didn’t and couldn’t get any information about HOW long we would be without power. Even information on who had their power back on and who was left to work on, would have been great; during that long dark week, we were reduced to driving around once it started getting dark, to get a take on things. Really, for those of us who were out of power for days, did you imagine, when it went out, that it would take so long to get it back? (By the way, if you can’t make it to City Hall to tell your story tonight, you can watch the hearing live on the Seattle Channel, ch. 21, or a replay Friday morning.)
The city decision is in for the 53rd Avenue wastewater pump station upgrade @ Alki. We’ll confess to not knowing enough about the project to be able to say how many more steps remain before the work will start … but we’ll be looking to find out. According to this handout from last summer’s public meeting, once the work starts, it’ll last (gulp) more than a year and a half.
For the first time since the first day after The Storm To Be Named Later, West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician turned up on weather watch today, musing about mud. Even though the latest forecast doesn’t look so dire, we’ll give him props for calling out the cavalry just in case.
P-I says we’ve already got another WS outage. Let us know what’s happening where you’re at.
Yeah, the wind out there makes us nervous too. We’ll probably feel that way for a long time.
There’s a lot at stake for West Seattle in the school vote coming up five weeks from today. The measures are mentioned as part of this “year ahead for Seattle Public Schools” story in today’s Times. To find specifics, you have to scavenge through the SPS site; a no-frills doc outlines the half-billion dollar bond measure that we’ll be voting on, a large chunk of which would go toward combining the Denny Middle School & Chief Sealth HS campuses on this side of WS (new turf for the Denny/Sealth field is in the bond plan too). But when you go vote, keep in mind the bond measure is separate from the $400 million levy the district needs just to keep running. And neither will pass, no matter how many “yes” votes, if not enough voters (at least 40% of the # who voted last November) show up.
As first mentioned here back in the thick of Outage #1, the city council’s making time this Wednesday night to listen to The Public regarding “Lessons from the Windstorm.” (Yes, a public hearing with a title. Maybe it even deserves a theme song.) 5:30 pm Wednesday, City Hall. If there’s a lesson you hope the city powers-that-be learned, it’s your big chance.
Looks like our neighborhood is still in one piece this morning, despite thunderous midnight explosions (even saw a red flare in the distance, as if someone was sending up the signal to say YO! NEW YEAR! WE’RE OVER HERE!). Now a day to recover, before we start looking ahead to the next “holiday season” (summer, of course — 4th of July! parades! Blue Angels! and so on). Meantime, some practical information — here’s what to do with the tree.
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