Holiday weekend’s winding down, time to get back to the news. We’ve got updates in the works on some ongoing major West Seattle issues/stories, including, right now, the latest on the Alki Statue of Liberty Plaza Project. As we reported here last Monday, the approved ’08 city budget includes the $50,000 that city leaders announced for a new pedestal just before the recast statue was placed atop the old one in September. The group raising money in hopes of surrounding that new pedestal with a plaza has just updated its blog (read it here) with the latest on fundraising efforts for the plaza project (last public meeting about it was September 13; here’s our detailed report from that night). In the new blog update, project committee co-chair Paul Carr writes, “… we may need another $80,000 or so, just to be on the safe side”; we e-mailed to see if that meant cost estimates had changed. Paul’s reply to WSB: “The estimate is still the same; as far as we know, the $157,000 is the construction estimate. However, even though no one on our committee is making a dime (no salaries or other labor costs), there still are fund-raising expenses. The Fiscal Sponsor takes a small percentage for being the Fiscal Sponsor and keeping charge of the money, we have printing costs: brochures, etc. Bottom line: If we can raise another $80,000, we estimate we can safely do everything the community wanted.” The Sealady Blog update also mentions a “gala dinner” for the project in the works coming up in late December @ the Alki Duke’s. (If you are just coming in on the statue/plaza story, all our previous coverage is archived here.)
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