West Seattle, Washington
18 Monday
By Tilden School’s 5th-grade class
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
Last fall, Tilden‘s fourth and fifth grade students read books for a Scholastic Books contest in which Scholastic would donate 100 books to a community in need for each class that read 100 books. Both classes did, so Scholastic donated 100 books each to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, and Laguna Pueblo in Cibola County, NM!
This made us eligible to enter another Scholastic contest, the Care Where You Are Sweepstakes, to win 500 books that we could donate to a local organization. Our 5th grade class is one of 200 winners out of 16,000 entries.
After researching local nonprofit organizations, we found out about the foster kids at Treehouse (treehouse4kids.org), and decided this was the right place for the 500 books. Our class thought Treehouse could use some of the books for tutoring foster children, and put some of the books in its Wearhouse for the foster kids to choose and take home.
It makes us feel really good to be able to help foster children, and donate books that they could read and use to learn. The books we’re donating include 100 preschool and Kindergarten books, 100 Kindergarten and 1st grade books, 100 2nd and 3rd grade books, 100 4th through 6th grade books, and 100 books for grades 7 and up. We hope that Treehouse foster kids enjoy using these books!
If you don’t frequent the city Parks Department‘s page for “requests for proposals” – you might have missed word that the city has finally published the official “request for proposals” to get a private operator for West Seattle Stadium. It’s one of two RFPs of West Seattle interest — the other seeks vendors to sell firewood at Alki (and Golden Gardens). More on that in a moment. First, the stadium proposal has been in the works a while (first covered here last fall), and still seeks an operator that will pay for improvements as well as run the stadium; the desired improvements are described in the RFP this way:
At minimum, the City has identified the North Grand Stand area, including the restrooms, locker room, walkways, and concession building as a focus for major renovation.
That appears to be a shorter wish list than the draft version of the RFP (9/08 WSB report here). Proposals have to be turned in by March 26; a decision is to be made, with applicants notified, by April 23. Now, about that firewood – the RFP for the vendor search is the last surviving remnant of last summer’s brief beach-fire-ban flap:
Interesting tidbit buried in this RFP – year 1, the vendor-sold firewood would be just an option for beach-fire fans, but if there’s a year 2, they would no longer be allowed to have the option to bring their own:
The Department is seeking proposals from operators to sell wood to the general public for beach fires at specific beach locations in these two parks, from May 1 2009 through April 2010. The Summer months which includes May through September and selected special events, such as the Christmas Ship event, would be the required and most-beneficial times to sell. (NOTE: Park Patrons are not required to purchase wood from this concession and are allowed to bring in their own wood during this first year. If the Department decides to extend or advertise again the following year, we will require that all Park Patrons must purchase the wood from the permitted vendor.)
The Department will select the concessionaire(s) that best demonstrates the ability to provide
innovative, affordable, safe and reliable services to park patrons while paying reasonable concession
fees to the Department. The price of the wood must be no higher than the average price of wood
sold in the Seattle metro area stores (ie Safeway, Albertsons, etc.) You are encouraged to offer
services and/or products that would be complimentary to the existing uses of the park. The
Department reserves the right to approve any proposed business activity.
If you want to seek that contract, March 11 is the deadline for your proposal. Forms and details for both RFPs are linked from this city page.
At Madison Middle School in West Seattle, the stage is literally set tonight for a show tomorrow morning that will rock the cafeteria/auditorium space and the hundreds of students who will fill it. That’s where we caught up this afternoon with Dr. Bernard Harris (bio), a former astronaut who made history during one of his two space flights as the first African-American to walk in space. (What you see on stage to the right in the photo is one of two shuttle seats that also have been in space, and now are used as props during his presentation.) Madison is the first stop on this year’s DREAM Tour, meant to get students jazzed about math and science, and in no small part their practical applications – even to the level of discussing how those lines of work can become lucrative.
Based in Houston, Dr. Harris himself is an internist as well as a former astronaut, and now runs a venture-capital firm, Vesalius Ventures (named after legendary anatomist Andreas Vesalius) focused on telemedicine, as well as the Harris Foundation, to focus on the cause of advancing math-science education. Tomorrow morning’s presentation will include not just a speech by Dr. Harris but videos, with young scientists telling their stories, and even an audio/video surround-sound experience of a shuttle launch. He hopes the kids will leave “fired up” – and when they take their enthusiasm home, or to their friends’ houses, here’s what he hopes will happen:
But first, he says, it’s a matter of making it relevant: “I always ask them, do you enjoy cell phones, rap music, video games? They all exist because scientists or engineers developed the technology. We try to bring it down to earth, relate it to real life.” And the message: “If you want to have a career where you can take care of yourself and your family — math and science can be the key.” Expanding that realization is an urgent job, he adds, given how far behind our country is in producing new workers to join fields (medicine, engineering, and more) where those skills are vital.
He is doing everything he can to help make that happen, involved in an effort that provides scholarships, as well as in other core efforts from his Harris Foundation, such as Summer Science Camps. He revealed in our chat this afternoon that they’ll be announcing next Monday that they’re expanding to 30 locations nationwide this year. (The closest one is at Oregon State University.) But first, he was speaking at an education-themed event in downtown Seattle tonight; after he appears at Madison tomorrow, it’s on to Detroit, Chicago, and Minneapolis later this year – and students interested in staying involved with the project, he says, will find new features on its website soon.
Yes, that’s a hot-dog stand outside Beveridge Place Pub in Morgan Junction. Something new they’re trying for the next month, said April, when we called to check on what we thought we saw. Heading back down now for a photo. PHOTO AND INFO ADDED 5:35 PM: The cart’s from Hot Dog Joes, which has carts in other spots around the city. That’s Drew staffing the one outside Beveridge Place Pub tonight. He says they’re planning to be there Thursdays through Saturdays, setting up around mid-afternoon (3ish) and staying till late night (maybe as late as 11). Their suppliers include Bavarian Meat and Hebrew National; chicken and veggie dogs too. Prices start at $5.
Just got an update from Dan Donohoe at the office of King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg: He says Satterberg has a family emergency and has to cancel his planned appearance at tonight’s South Delridge/White Center Community Safety Coalition meeting, but will reschedule. (However, the law/justice reps who are usually on hand at the meeting do include a prosecutor’s-office rep.) Everything else planned for the meeting, including updates on local crime trends and nuisance spots, is on as usual, 6 pm, St. James Place, 9421 18th SW.
As mentioned earlier, we followed up further with King County Council Chair Dow Constantine‘s office to get beyond the statement issued earlier, which acknowledged bus problems and urged better performance/communication next time. There hasn’t been a statement on that directly from Metro yet, so our simple question – so what WAS the problem – has a simple answer, according to the Constantine team, which checked directly with Metro after receiving numerous complaints about late/no-show buses: It was a “judgment call.” Metro management told them that serious snow was NOT predicted in the info they had late last night, when they had to make the call about whether to spend the money to bring in the extra/overtime staff to chain buses and handle extra communications duties. (There was one short, heavy blast of snow/hail around quarter till midnight – as we showed you here – then it cleared out for several hours before the serious snow began in the 4/5 am vicinity.) So they weren’t ready for what happened with the weather.
Of interest since a West Seattle site is still in the running as the possible location of a municipal-misdemeanor jail for “north/east King County cities” including Seattle: A coalition of South King County cities has just announced it’s chosen a site in Des Moines, according to this P-I story just published, on port-owned property (map). As for the latest on the Seattle (etc.) site search, Becca Fong provided an update at this week’s Highland Park Action Committee meeting, noting the environment-impact “scoping” process has just finished, adding that HPAC brought up “as many environmental concerns as we could find, to broaden the ‘scope,’ hopefully making our Highland Park Way site a little less appealing.” Now, she said, the process is in a “holding pattern,” with the official environmental-impact statement due in about six months, triggering another process of public comment and review before the site is chosen next year.
Still awaiting answers on why information lagged this morning. However, this is what Metro says about the state of its system as of now, looking toward the pm commute – text of the official news release:
locations in West Seattle recently consolidated operations at Jefferson Square, vacating the California SW branch. This morning, another big change is being announced at that firm: previous owner Mike Gain (12/07 WSB photo at left), long a major name in West Seattle real estate sharing the helm of Cayce and Gain, is taking over. We received word of this from two sources last night, and Gain answered our query this morning by saying he’ll send a news release with full details as soon as it’s available, so we’ll get more info a bit later. ADDED 11:52 AM: Here’s the news release in its entirety:
Just in from King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office spokesperson Dan Donohoe: “Dion Fillmore was charged today with murder in the second degree for the death of his grandmother on February 13 in West Seattle. He remains in the King County Jail on $1 million bail. Arraignment is scheduled for March 5.” Last week, Fillmore was charged in an unrelated assault case (
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