It’s been a big month for Sustainable West Seattle. First, the group’s third annual festival brought out hundreds as part of ReFRESH Southwest at Delridge Community Center on June 5; a week later, the long-planned West Seattle Tool Library celebrated its grand opening; and Monday night, nine days after that milestone, SWS had more news: Announced at their monthly Community Forum at the Senior Center of West Seattle, they’ve gotten their official nonprofit status, which means your donations are tax-deductible. Speaking of donations, the Tool Library is now up to 500 tools (here are its hours) and starting July 4th, SWS will table at the West Seattle Farmers Market every other Sunday, which means another chance for you to drop off tool donations. They STILL need that electric pressure washer, by the way! (And before next month’s meeting, they’ll be co-presenting GreenLife during West Seattle Summer Fest, July 9-10-11 in The Junction.)

Monday night’s featured topic was public campaign financing and its role in sustainability. At right is Craig Salins, executive director of Washington Public Campaigns, which just celebrated its biggest awards banquet yet, more than 300 people at South Seattle Community College‘s Brockey Center on Saturday night. His group contends that public financing of political campaigns would enable more voices to be heard – particularly by the elected officials who should be paying more attention to their constituents’ needs, instead of spending their time in endless pursuit of the big money that is usually required to pay for a winning campaign these days. The group has worked in particular to advance legislation to publicly fund state Supreme Court campaigns; Salins told SWS that the bill had support, but the Legislature ran out of time to deal with it while trying to pass a budget, so WPC will try again next session. He also said the group’s working on a Town Hall meeting about public financing next month. Side note: 34th District State House Position 2 candidate Marcee Stone is past president of WPC and a longtime public-financing advocate; one of her opponents, Geoffrey “Mac” McElroy, was the lone candidate in the audience at the SWS meeting..

Sustainable West Seattle’s community forums are usually at 7 pm on the third Monday of the month; on July 19, the spotlight’s on beekeeping. In the meantime, this Thursday, anyone interested in permaculture is invited to join that SWS subcommittee at Uptown Espresso to talk about a rainwater project on the Pathfinder K-8 campus.