West Seattle, Washington
15 Friday
Vicky sends word this morning of two open houses tomorrow at public West Seattle computer centers you might not even know about, part of the city’s Get Online Week, which starts tomorrow:
Did you know you can attend classes for free or low-cost at computer learning centers in your own neighborhood? Come in, have a snack, learn about our labs and the workshops and classes offered for teens, adults and seniors. Stop by one of these centers and GET ONLINE!
October 3, 3:00-6:00 PM
High Point Mobile Lab
6400 Sylvan Way SWOctober 3, 6:00-8:00 PM
RecTech Delridge Computer Lab
4501 Delridge Way SW
WSB has been on Facebook and Twitter for nearly four years – long before most other news organizations (among others) hopped on. We’ve rolled through their changes, and hey, the services are free; they have the right to experiment. We made one big mistake ourselves, starting out on FB as “WS Blog” with a personal profile and maxing out on “friends” before realizing several months ago we really were supposed to be “West Seattle Blog” with a no-“fan”-limit page.
But Facebook’s latest change seems to be putting a roadblock in front of people who are just trying to find out “hey, what’s the latest?” …
Two more notes from last night’s Southwest District Council meeting (the Fauntleroy Expressway Seismic Retrofit update, reported here earlier, was the first).
That’s a screenshot from seattle.changeby.us, which has just gone “live,” as Code for America‘s Anna Bloom told SWDC reps. She and other Code for America fellows have been working on projects for Seattle (among other cities) off and on for months, as local community groups (with whom they’ve met, while listening to needs and vetting ideas) are well aware. The site is meant to be collaborative – if you have an idea, you can type it in the Post-It Note-like space on the Change By Us home page, and then it’ll take you into the site, where you have the option to hook up with any similar proposals already in the system, or to just go ahead and launch yours. Bloom explained that it offers options for sharing your idea, in order to get others involved, and other ways to get traction. Now that it’s live, in “beta” mode, you’re invited to give it a try.
Second note: Waste Management Northwest, which handles much of the trash/recycling pickup around here, came to SWDC because it’s in the final stages of planning “Neighborhood Recycling Rewards.” It’s a contest aimed at helping Seattle boost its recycling rate (relatively high as it is, there’s room for it to rise), and it’s going to be in the “neighborhood vs. neighborhood” mode. Whichever WM-served neighborhood “reduces the most waste through increased recycling and composting” during the six-month contest will get $50,000 to use for some kind of community improvement project.
WMNW came to the council with a couple of questions – whether SWDC could be the official WS community partner, including helping decide what the “prize” might be if this area wins. Also to be decided: How to define a neighborhood for this competition, since West Seattle includes three different pickup-day zones. Will the entire peninsula be counted as one neighborhood? Just so happened that Delridge Neighborhoods District Council chair Mat McBride was at the meeting, and invited WM to to DNDC’s next gathering (7 pm September 21st, Youngstown Cultural Arts Center) to pitch there too. Once the contest is under way on September 30th, WM promises weekly online updates on neighborhood performance, and then an award ceremony next March.
(2010 photo of ex-Fire Station 37, at 35th/Othello)
It’s likely to be a quick, routine vote of approval, but nonetheless, it should be noted that the authorization to sell historic former Fire Station 37 is on the agenda tomorrow during the City Council‘s afternoon meeting. Here’s the full version of what they’ll be voting on. The new Station 37, a few blocks south of the old one, opened last fall; the city had been taking comments on the old station’s future since last summer, and concluded it’s most likely to become a “private residence.” Ex-FS 37 was built in 1925.
If we had to count how many times a day we turn to Seattle.gov while working on WSB stories/event listings/etc., we would run out of fingers, toes, and probably grains of sand on Alki. The place to go for everything from police/fire updates to development-site status reports to historic city photos (and way beyond) has just won a big national award: “Best City Portal” in the 2011 Best of the Web Awards from the Center for Digital Government. Those you’ll want to high-five, at least virtually, include at least two West Seattleites – city tech kahuna Bill Schrier and Seattle.gov web manager Bruce Blood, who commented on the WSB Facebook page, “Pleased as punch can’t begin to describe our glee! Seattle.gov has hundreds of contributors (web managers, content creators, server and network admins, to name a few) throughout the City. Every last one of them shares in the award!”
When the city sent around a survey link, explaining it was about the “Comprehensive Plan,” we wondered if anyone would really take a survey about something so generic-sounding, as important as it is. But the fine city folks working to drum up participation for the survey explain that it boils down to nothing less than “what do you want to see in Seattle in the next 20 years?” And they share a few of the suggestions West Seattle participants have offered so far:
*Walkable. When neighborhoods are walkable: people recognize their neighbors, can get to services – even when weather shuts down the City, cars stay home and pollute less, household finances are improved with lower transportation costs, local businesses thrive because they are neighbors and tax dollars stay in the City, life is simpler.
*For neighborhoods and businesses to be more diverse voluntarily, and have more/better housing choices for all citizens. Work on ways to create jobs even if they are just entry level. Assist those getting off of welfare and out of prisons with real job skills so they won’t have to go back to welfare or jail, but will be able to support themselves and exist and contribute in society.
*Install a sea organ along the waterfront.
(We had to look that last one up.) Fewer than 1,000 people citywide have taken the survey so far – so take a few minutes and voice your ideas now! The survey is here.
Remember the July 5 saga of Patrick Abdo rescuing a baby raccoon stuck in his Morgan Junction-area fence? That was the 2nd-most-popular WSB story in July, which we are proud to announce was a record-setting month- 974,110 pageviews, up from the 961K+ record set in June, and a 25 percent increase over July of last year. This summertime readership jump is a new trend, as previous WSB records tended to result from snow!
Since most WSB stories can be seen without clicking away to another page, gauging story popularity from our Google Analytics stats is more art than science – but stories like the raccoon rescue, viewed on a standalone page as people add and read comments, or shared via Facebook, break away from the pack. The month’s #1 story appeared here just last week, inspired by an unexpected line in one of the SPD Blotter‘s relatively routine roundups of traffic patrols: A bicyclist stopped on the Admiral Way hill for going 42 mph. 
After we noticed it and followed up on it, citywide media picked it up too. Other July highlights: We were first to report on the plan for the now-iconic SBX (right) to take a short jaunt out into Elliott Bay so the drillship Kulluk could join it at Vigor Shipyards on Harbor Island; its trip drew scores of photographers to the shore, and some shared their work here.
July brought another set of numbers that we’re proud of: Community-event sponsorships! WSB co-sponsored as well as covered West Seattle Summer Fest, 
the West Seattle Grand Parade, the West Seattle Garden Tour, the Alki Art Fair (photo at left), WestSide Baby‘s Stuff the Bus diaper drive, plus the ongoing West Seattle Outdoor Movies (“Despicable Me” this week!) and Summer Concerts at Hiawatha series (Massy Ferguson this week!), and the West Seattle In Motion campaign.
Finally, thank you so much for your support of OUR sponsors – the local businesses and organizations who advertise on WSB because they want to make sure you know who they are, where they are, what they offer. Please let them know you appreciate their support for 24/7 community-collaborative news/information on WSB. Besides their ads in the sidebar, you’ll find them all listed, categorized by type of business, with web/Facebook links and other info, on our SPONSORS! page. Here’s to a great August!
“You need a great principal, you’re deserving of that.”
That’s how Seattle Public Schools‘ interim Superintendent Dr. Susan Enfield opened tonight’s meeting at district HQ to talk about the process of getting Chief Sealth International High School a principal for the school year that’s just a month away – since longtime principal John Boyd is leaving for a new job in Highline Public Schools.
More than 60 people came to the meeting, including a dozen or so Sealth students, Seattle School Board president Steve Sundquist (father of two Sealth graduates), West Seattle’s executive director of schools Aurora Lora (at center in photo at right, taken during small-group breakouts), Sealth PTSA and faculty members, among others.
Before we get to the toplines – for anyone who wasn’t able to attend tonight, Lora will be on the Sealth campus tomorrow, 8:30 am-2:30 pm in the alumni room (near the main entrance), available to anyone who wants to talk about the principal situation.
Google Street View is still making the rounds in West Seattle. Above, we caught it on camera as it passed WSB HQ back on Tuesday; today, we’ve had reports from Alki and Admiral. If you don’t use Google Maps, the Street View car has special camera technology to capture a 360-plus view of everything it passes – which is then immortalized into the mapping system, at least until the next time they send a crew into the area (could be a few years).
When photographer/musician extraordinaire Trileigh Tucker told us she’d heard a Google Street View car was in West Seattle today, we didn’t believe it until Meredith shared the photo via Facebook (the picture’s from Pigeon Point). Trileigh’s suggestion is that we all go put “I (Heart) West Seattle” signs outside our homes/apartments/whatever just in case the GSV car drives past. (We know they’ve been here in a previous July – if you look up California/Edmunds, the view you see includes West Seattle Summer Fest tents and road-closure barricades!)
Two notes from the Admiral Neighborhood Association: First, they’re the latest neighborhood group to launch a website – it went live over the weekend; you can see it here. Previously, their main means of communication was a Yahoo! mail group. The website includes information on the Summer Concerts at Hiawatha series (co-sponsored by WSB), which previously had its own site.
Second – tomorrow night is ANA’s monthly meeting, with lots on the agenda, including the concert series and the 4th of July Kids’ Parade (previewed here earlier tonight). 7 pm at Admiral Congregational Church, lower meeting room, California/Hill – see the full agenda here.
Before the day gets crazy: First, thanks to the 500+ people who have already answered our “4 Questions for You.” In case you didn’t have time during the week but might have a few minutes now, here’s the last call, before we close the “survey” at weekend’s end. The questions are here.
Second, we’re honored that WSB has received another award: WSB is the city’s “Best News Website,” according to this year’s Seattle Weekly Web Awards (reader votes were factored in, with a panel of judges having the final say; WSB was a 2010 winner as well, though the categories differed).
Third, if you use Facebook, a warning that they seem to have reset the news feeds again – without having initiated any changes ourselves, we just wound up with the “only see pages you interact with” setting again, and had to fix it so we can see ALL the WS/related pages we have “liked.” To make sure this hasn’t happened to you, scroll down your news-feed updates to “edit options.” If you don’t have “updates from all your friends and pages” chosen, you might not see updates from pages like ours that are more frequently viewed than discussed. (What? Didn’t know WSB was on FB too? facebook.com/westseattleblog Also on Twitter – twitter.com/westseattleblog. If you don’t use the service but want to see what we’re tweeting about – an eclectic mix of observations, bulletins, and conversations – scroll to the bottom of our sidebar, which always shows the latest WSB tweets.) Have a great Saturday!
Fundraising car washes, you hear about often. Today – we have word of a fundraising dog wash. This Saturday, 3:30-6 pm at Southwest Athletic Complex, the Chief Sealth International High School Yoga Club is raising money with a dog wash. $5 minimum donation per pooch.
Can you spare a few minutes to help us evaluate the present and look to the future? We appreciate any time you can take to answer “4 Questions for You, from WSB.” Considering we buried the link’s debut at the end of a loooong story late Monday night, we’re heartened by how many people still managed to find it and use it. But in case you missed that link, here it is again. We hope you’ll consider taking a few minutes to answer those 4 questions sometime in the next few days (we’re only keeping it up for a week, figuring that most regulars will have seen it by then). Thank you!
As a blessedly safe, quiet holiday weekend closes, a few bits of WSB news to share – and a request.
First, if you didn’t see our note in the WSB Forums: We are proud to announce the latest award for WSB, because this one, like the national award last fall from the Online News Association, is much more about you than about us. When the Society of Professional Journalists announced its Regional Awards last weekend, WSB was honored for Best Online Community Engagement. (We’d drop that last word and simply say, Best Online Community … or maybe drop the “online” too!) Tough competition – our friends at KING 5 came in 2nd; 3rd-place honors went to Amy Duncan for MyGreenLake.com, who presents news and information earnestly and thoroughly to, and with, her neighborhood. What was taken into account for this award was your participation and how we work together – comment threads that so often yield new information about stories; news that is a collaboration between your notes/tips and our research; user-to-user WSB Forums; the neighbor-alerting-neighbor heart of West Seattle Crime Watch coverage. Your daily involvement and caring is often breathtaking. (P.S. The SPJ awards also included one for our partners at the Seattle Times on behalf of a project with which we were involved, special coverage of the graffiti-vandalism problem – celebrated with an Innovation Award.)
Second – We are overdue in telling you about a nationwide grassroots campaign we have helped found, Authentically Local. 
We are founders along with more than two dozen other independent, community-collaborative, local online-news publishers around the country. We all decided to start it because our “industry” is currently under siege from megacorporations that are moving into communities with one-size-fits-all operations to try to templatize and commoditize neighborhood news/information. The attraction for them is twofold: Once they have hundreds of sites, they can sell space to the highest-bidding national advertiser, and/or try to save their own failing old-media businesses through amassing small-business ads. But Authentically Local isn’t just an awareness campaign for those of us who do news; our counterparts in New Jersey at the nation’s first successful grass-roots independent online-news site, Baristanet, who hatched the idea, have suggested it might be appropriate for other types of businesses too. Check it out here.
To the localism point, two links that might be of interest. Your editor here offered perhaps-radical thoughts in a recent interview with Street Fight Magazine, a new national online publication looking at the “business of hyperlocal” (the latter is the shop-talk term for “neighborhood”; we don’t like it, so we don’t use it). And the inherent localism of WSB has drawn attention across the Atlantic: Gretchen sent a note pointing to this Financial Times (London) article about a wave of “localism” sweeping Britain – it seems some aspects of what we take for granted in civic life are wholly new ideas there. The sidebar story to the right of the main text column leads off, for some reason, with a quick summary of “Localism, Seattle style,” with WSB as exhibit A – noting recent WSB discussions on schools and transportation, and commenters’ tendency to question authority.
NOW, OUR REQUEST FOR YOU: Four questions we’d love to have you answer, if you can spare a few minutes, as we look to the future. Your answers can be short, long, or somewhere inbetween – just go here. Thanks in advance!
When you think of children, and mentors, your first thought may be of adults mentoring the kids. But for groups such as Girl Scouts, it means youth mentoring younger kids – as was the case on Saturday at Camp Long, for West Seattle’s Junior Girl Scout Troop 41504. Troop leader Patricia Hahler is so proud of her Scouts (6th graders) for earning their Bronze Awards, she invited the media to cover the crowning event – a Fun Day her Scouts hosted for younger Scouts (three Brownie troops – 2nd/3rd graders – and one Daisy troop – kindergarteners/first graders). The Junior Scouts set up three “stations” around the park for the younger Scouts to visit, in rotation (above, First Aid; next, Improv):
Other stations included Hiking/Compass and Games/Sensory – which is where we found this activity:
Patricia explains that Bronze is the first of three levels of awards that older Girl Scouts earn – at the next level, Cadettes, they earn Silver Awards; then as Senior Girl Scouts, Gold Awards. And it’s not easy; she explained, “There are many requirements within the Bronze Award requirements to satisfy before reaching the service project.” (They are explained on the Girl Scouts’ national website, here.) Congratulations to the Troop 41504 Girl Scouts earning their Bronze Award: Penny Dierich, Corinne Manley, Jane Miller, Kaitlin Morgan, Regan Nagle, Haley Pyscher and Hana Kurahara Sisk!
NEW PLACE TO FIND CHIEF SEALTH INTERNATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL ONLINE: Seattle Public Schools has been revamping its web presence, not just for the district’s own website, but also for individual schools. The latest West Seattle school to get a new site – and new URL – is Chief Sealth, at chiefsealthhs.seattleschools.org. According to the announcement, CSIHS families should know “the new site has new capabilities for connecting with your students’ classes and teachers,” though they won’t be fully functional till fall (they’re explained here). Meantime, one event you’ll find listed on the new site is coming up Wednesday:
5:30-7 pm on Wednesday (May 25), student art will be on display, with some on sale too. Then at 7 pm, Sealth 9th graders will perform original poetry, written in the Book-It Repertory Theater “page to stage” style.
(Recent screengrab from the “incident response” map [incidents are NOT “real-time”])
From last night’s West Seattle Blockwatch Captains Network meeting at the Southwest Precinct: A city delegation spoke to the group to provide a full list of online resources available from Seattle Police. Amy Hirotaka from the city’s Community Technology program, Sol Villareal from the mayor’s office, and Shanna Christie, who runs SPD’s online operations, were on hand. From the list she distributed:
SPD website: seattle.gov
SPD Blotter (summaries of some incidents): spdblotter.seattle.gov
SPD on Twitter: twitter.com/SeattlePD
SPD on Facebook: facebook.com/SeattlePolice
Download police reports online: seattle.gov/police/records/online.htm
Map of recent police reports: web5.seattle.gov/mnm/policereports.aspx
Map of recent 911 responses: web5.seattle.gov/mnm/incidentresponse.aspx
File a crime report online: seattle.gov/police/report
Crime statistics: seattle.gov/police/crime/stats.htm
Crime-prevention info: seattle.gov/police/prevention
Block Watch info: seattle.gov/police/programs/blockwatch
Night Out info: seattle.gov/police/nightout
Open city datasets (not just police/crime-related): data.seattle.gov
They also discussed what additional resources might be helpful; WSBWCN’s Deb Greer suggested a video explaining how to start a Block Watch. Christie says the SPD site is going “through a revamp process,” so comments are welcome: shanna.christie@seattle.gov.
WSBWCN also has links on its website from last night’s presentation – so far, two handouts with more context for city resources, current and future, and more may be added – here’s that link.
Aside from the presentation, one topic of discussion, brought up by attendees: Whether medical-marijuana businesses attract crime. The City Attorney’s precinct liaison, Henry Chae, said there aren’t many stats to point to yet. He reiterated that the city is continuing to wait to see what the state will do, as SB 5073 – which would license and regulate medical-marijuana enterprises – is still awaiting Governor Gregoire‘s action (she has hinted she might veto parts of it).
The West Seattle Blockwatch Captains Network meets on fourth Tuesdays at the SW Precinct, 6:30 pm. They’re online at wsblockwatchnet.wordpress.com and on Facebook here.
Need someplace to get online with a publicly accessible computer, besides library branches? Here’s a new option – Southwest Community Center (2801 SW Thistle) has just announced classes as well as a couple hours a day of “open” use time. Read on for the announcement, with details:Read More
If you have a 5-gallon bucket (or more than one!) to spare, West Seattle High School can use it. Jennifer Hall explains why:
Our YMCA Earth Service Corps has been getting West Seattle High School students and staff ready for a “Compost Test Drive” to be held on Tuesday, April 5. Cedar Grove Composting will be partnering with us, as we get our program up and running. They are helping us out by delivering a trial compost dumpster on Monday. We are also looking for donations of five gallon buckets to be used for food scraps and napkins in classrooms, in offices, and in our staff lounge. We are also going to be using the buckets as liquids buckets, and encouraging better recycling of milk cartons and cans at our school. Students will be able to earn community service hours by helping us out at lunch times, before and after school.
We are a little apprehensive; food composting at WSHS is going to be a big undertaking. But we are also excited, and feel that food composting is the right thing to do for our school environment, for our community, and for our future.
If readers would like more information about food composting at West Seattle High School, or if anyone would like to help us out by donating a bucket or volunteering, please e-mail or call Jennifer Hall, West Seattle High School Earth Service Corps Advisor – jlhall@seattleschools.org, 206-252-8845.
From West Seattleite Irene Stewart, who’s an aging/disability services (ADS) planner with the city:
Every four years, ADS prepares a new Area Plan on Aging for King County, which guides our work. As we prepare to draft a new plan for 2012 through 2015, we need to hear from Seattle and King County residents. We invite residents of all ages to complete an online questionnaire. We especially encourage people who are age 60 or older, adults with disabilities, and family caregivers to respond.
Click here to take the survey. Irene adds, “Everybody is aging, so everybody should care.’
If you check in with WSB sometimes via Facebook, you might be aware we’ve been stuck for a long time at 5,000 friends, FB’s arbitrary limit for “profiles.” We didn’t know things would turn out that way when we started on FB as “WS Blog” almost four years ago (before WSB even became a business), but for months now, there have been more than 100 friend requests we weren’t allowed to approve, and an increasing amount of people who couldn’t even get into the queue because, they would message us, “FB says you have ‘too many friends’.” For a while we hoped FB would change; they won’t, so we have to. Please go HERE to “like” the new West Seattle Blog page (nothing fancy – yet – but at least, no limits) if you are so inclined. Thank you!
Another online upgrade from the City of Seattle: A map to track potholes. They’ve long had an online-reporting form, but now there’s a map to go along with it, just unveiled today. See the map here; see the accompanying information (including weekly status reports) here.
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