The first full week of the month means the start of the calendar of monthly recurring community-group meetings – starting with two this Wednesday, North Delridge Neighborhood Council (6:30 pm, Delridge Library) and Southwest District Council (7 pm, South Seattle Community College [WSB sponsor] board room). One of West Seattle’s neighborhood councils recently regrouped – here’s the story of how, and what’s next:

By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Donn DeVore just moved to Westwood last year, but didn’t want to just sit back and see what happened with his neighborhood and its community group.

After finding out that the Westwood Neighborhood Council hadn’t met in months, DeVore coordinated a regrouping meeting of sorts a week and a half ago.

With him were members and leaders, old and new. In the photo above, that’s Donn; to his left, Pablo Lambinicio, the first person to lead the WNC; not pictured but sitting on his other side were Ron Angeles, longtime Delridge Neighborhoods District coordinator for the city, and Steven Fischer, longtime WNC leader, particularly through the months of struggle to get Seattle Public Schools to pay attention to neighborhood concerns over the Denny Middle School-Chief Sealth High School co-located campus project.

DeVore and Lambinicio both told their stories as the meeting began.

For the former, he found out his new neighborhood had a council, and started digging around to find out when it met and how to get involved – then, finally, he said, he wound up walking six miles distributing flyers for the meeting he organized, almost a year after the last one.

For Lambinicio, his involvement dated back almost 20 years – to a time when the Westwood neighborhood had to band together to get street-lighting problems solved, among other things.

To educate newcomers, Fischer explained that many of the neighborhood improvements they see – including street lights – resulted from citizen advocacy. He relayed the story of Roxhill Bog, south of (across Barton from) Westwood Village – the headwaters of Longfellow Creek, once smothered under fill, then literally unearthed and restored through neighborhood work, renewed at monthly work parties (2nd Saturday of every month, 9 am-1 pm – that means the next one is next Saturday, 10/10).

By the time they and everyone else in the room started to introduce themselves and explain what brought them there, the chairs — originally arranged in standard face-forward meeting format – had been rearranged into a circle. This added to the sense of regrouping and refreshing, which also was a theme for one of the city employees visiting the meeting, Department of Neighborhoods‘ Thomas Whittemore.

His main mission was to provide an update on the neighborhood-plan-update process, which included that well-attended meeting at Youngstown Arts Center in the thick of last July’s hot weather. Westwood shares a neighborhood plan with Highland Park (and at least one resident of HP came to Thursday’s meeting for exactly that reason).

As he had said at the previous week’s Delridge Neighborhoods District Council meeting, Whittemore explained that the next step in the process is a series of three meetings – one for neighborhoods in the north section of Seattle, one for central, one for south (which would include West Seattle). The date/location isn’t set yet, but it’s expected to happen in the first half of November.

Those on hand wanted to know more about the neighborhood plan, which Whittemore described as “not a Dead Sea Scroll – but a living document.”

The neighborhood itself is a living, evolving entity, as the stories told by the longtime participants reminded all. Ron Angeles said the area wasn’t even known as Westwood in the early ’60s – it was considered to be part of Highland Park.”Westwood Village was a swamp where we built rafts,” he recalled.

Now – one attendee mentioned – nearby residents see the side effects of the shopping-center development: Shopping carts. Not really a city thing to get them picked up, Angeles noted.

The city DOES have an interest in greenery – particularly in bringing back some of the lost tree canopy. Mary Quackenbush brought up the Re-Leaf program (first mentioned here a few weeks back) – the city and EarthCorps teaming up to offer free trees for residents in certain West Seattle neighborhoods, including Westwood. She explained the November 16th cutoff for applications and the ensuing December 5-6 pickups (more info here).

There’s particular urgency in Westwood, Mary said, with a 17 percent tree cover that she acknowledged “is pretty pathetic.”

Discussion stayed on the track of improving the neighborhood environment – and celebrating the progress that’s been made, with leaders and participants old and new. It’s been 10 years now since the first discussion started regarding restoration of Roxhill Bog; Quackenbush pointed out that it’s particularly beautiful in fall – “Go now, it’s really cool!” she exhorted others at the meeting. “We have dozens of bird species, when we used to have four.”

What about future projects? Much excitement surrounds the prospect of a new P-Patch Community Garden at 34th and Barton (first reported here in May). DeVore talked about organizing a 35th SW cleanup. Whittemore pointed out that Small Sparks grants are available through the Department of Neighborhoods, to help fund small projects (up to $500) and events. (You can find out how to apply, here.)

What about ongoing issues? DeVore brought up pedestrian access to Westwood Village. Fischer recalled that the shopping center used to have a management rep at Westwood Neighborhood Council meetings. That started a discussion regarding who’s in charge of the center now, and whether they can be invited. (Days after the meeting, DeVore talked with managers from the center and Target regarding the center’s southwestern access, and says they agreed stairs would be optimal to replace the current dirt path, though it might take some months to implement a plan.)

Longtime members continued to share experience and wisdom with those who were newer, including a discussion of neighborhood speeding issues: Lambinicio noted that speed bumps/humps aren’t possible on SW Trenton “because it’s an arterial” – even though it’s had “speeding issue” for years. Ron Angeles chimed in, “You have to let SDOT know (about your concerns) — you have to get to the right person and get somebody out there where you can point stuff out to them.” He encouraged feedback to SDOT because they’re “really trying hard right now to be more customer-service-oriented.”

When you have the right proposal, there’s the Neighborhood Street Fund process, he went on to explain – which will soon result in a new traffic circle at 31st and Henderson (map), in fact.

Neighbor-to-neighbor knowledge also resulted in discussion of some potentially innovative solutions, even part-humorous ones like this.

All in the span of barely two hours, talk also turned to crime concerns, practical questions such as what to do about rats and even how to approach neighbors about pet problems – one woman said she approached a neighbor about a “scary pit bull” and now gets more consideration than the neighbors who hadn’t talked to the dog’s owner. On the other hand, a man said, he went over to talk to his neighbors about a dog, and received both an obscene gesture and a suggestion to “get ear plugs.”

You may run that risk, but at least you tried – and that was the theme of this meeting. Don’t wait for “somebody” to “do something” – do it yourself. Even when Thomas Whittemore was talking about the neighborhood-plan-status process, he cautioned, “You may not get an official city update of your (neighborhood) plan for years, but that doesn’t mean you can’t (make changes)” – so many projects, he pointed out, were accomplished through the aforementioned Neighborhood Street Fund or other neighborhood-initiated funds, not proposed by the city itself.

Before adjourning, the group discussed how to stay in touch, and how often meetings might make sense – quarterly? every other month? Think “how does this group sustain itself,” advised Ron Angeles, who works with many neighborhood groups (like counterpart Stan Lock in the western section of West Seattle, which the city calls the Southwest District): Community councils often get a burst of momentum by taking one issue, “make it a big project, and rally the community around it … the community becomes a vehicle for people to find solutions. But – look beyond that one trouble spot to the greater community. It’s beyond projects; it’s about building relationships.”

Next meeting for the Westwood Neighborhood Council: The date’s not set but early December is under consideration.