West Seattle, Washington
03 Sunday
9 am to noon today, 710 AM on your radio (streaming online too), Hizzoner will become the latest guest host to fill in for KIRO Radio’s vacationing Dave Ross. We would suggest calling in with questions, but looking at his all-star guest list, we suspect he won’t have time.
It was about 15 minutes before the end of tonight’s school-board candidates forum on the lawn at Pathfinder K-8 when our internet-attuned ears really perked up.
First, Dan Dempsey (photo left), one of 4 contenders for the West Seattle-centered District 6 seat that Irene Stewart is giving up, declared he has multiple blogs on his campaign website, but isn’t getting much feedback yet. (Reviewing his site, it appears he’s put up more discussion boards than blogs, but nice gesture anyway!)
Then, answering the same audience question about ways the board could improve communication with the public, District 1 candidate Peter Maier (photo right) offered his observation that the official Seattle Public Schools website just isn’t particularly easy to use — tough to access documents, etc.
Understatement of the night, from our quarters (and not just us; a fair amount of those in attendance laughed knowingly). But as she rose next to answer the same communication question, District 2 incumbent Darlene Flynn (photo left) was clearly not amused, retorting sharply, “That website didn’t even HAVE documents on it four years ago.”
Not surprisingly, given the rocky year the school board has had, Flynn and the other incumbent in attendance, Sally Soriano (photo right), spent a lot of their time defending and detailing what they believe to be their key first-term accomplishments. But that was really a small part of a fascinating evening that probably helped clarify a lot of August 21 (and beyond) decisions … much more after the click:Read More
Political signs are multiplying along every busy stretch of road in WS (and elsewhere in the city). This is because the primary election, earliest ever, is less than 3 weeks away. The hottest Seattle races are for School Board (including the WS district, whose rep, Irene Stewart, is not re-running) and City Council; we are now just a few days away from your chance to see/hear the School Board candidates in person, at an outdoor forum, Pathfinder K-8 School lawn (Genesee Hill), Monday night, bring a picnic dinner, enjoy free ice-cream treats courtesy of the Pathfinder PTSA –picnicking and mingling with the candidates starts @ 5:30, speeches @ 6:30. One PS on the August 21st election: Two King County ballot measures will be decided, both tax levies — Proposition 1 for regional/rural parks, Proposition 2 for parks, trails, and Woodland Park Zoo.
He’s dropping by the weekly “Drinking Liberally” get-together (not in WS) tonight, according to HA.
If only more political events were set up this way: Two weeks from tonight, as the Aug. 21 primary election approaches, at least 10 Seattle School Board candidates (including 2 incumbents) will be at Pathfinder K-8 for an ice-cream social and moderated forum the evening of Aug. 6 — no, not in the cafeteria, but on the school’s front lawn, atop lovely Genesee Hill. Picnic dinners encouraged. Free ice-cream bars served. So far, forum organizer Eric Baer of the Pathfinder PTSA (co-sponsoring with counterpart PTSAs from 3 other WS elementaries: Alki, Arbor Heights, Sanislo) tells us the confirmed attendees include 4 of the 5 candidates in the WS-centered District 6 race, as well as candidates from the 3 other districts to be decided this year. Don’t just wade frantically through your voters’ pamphlet at the last minute; hear and see candidates in person. Aug. 6; see you there.
If you’re at Lincoln Park tonight, you might run into the 34th District Democrats, enjoying their annual picnic (6 pm, Shelter 3). You might see a few candidates too, since the primary election is so early this year (six weeks from tomorrow). In the interest of equal time, we tried to find out when the local Republicans are picnicking; closest thing we could find is the local GOP women having a bash at Salty’s tomorrow.
Just noticed this P-I article that mentions two WS Democratic (yes, we know that’s kind of redundant) politicians — State Senator Erik Poulsen and King County Councilmember Dow Constantine — are reportedly thinking about running for State Commissioner of Public Lands. Dow C has a re-election run to get through first, later this year; Erik P just got re-elected last year and holds his current office till 2010.
Like the way King County government runs? Maybe not, you say? You’re in luck. Its every-10-years charter review is under way, and you can put in your 2 cents tonight, 6:30 pm, The Hall @ Fauntleroy.
Following in the pixelsteps of Dan Dempsey and Edwin Fruit, two more candidates for our open school board seat are taking their “guest blogger” turns at Educating Mom today: Maria Ramirez and Steve Sundquist.
First Dan Dempsey; now Edwin Fruit, another of the 5 candidates for the WS-centered open school board seat in the Aug. 21 primary, takes his “guest blogger” turn at Educating Mom.
With our state’s earliest primary election ever (Aug. 21) just 10 weeks away, it’s not too soon to start figuring out who merits your vote. To that end, the 34th District Democrats welcome all to their candidate forum tonight, 7:15 pm at The Hall @ Fauntleroy (including nonpartisan offices such as school board). Here’s the list of who they’re expecting.
Educating Mom has offered space to all school-board candidates to post “guest blog entries” making their pitches for the job. One of the first, just up today, is Dan Dempsey, WSHS teacher who’s one of the five people in the Aug. 21 primary for the school-board job that Irene Stewart is leaving.
The deadline to file for this year’s elections has just passed; here are a few WS-related notes from the final list. No time to rustle up info-links on the new additions at the moment so if anyone can vouch for them, please leave a comment, and we’ll follow up with more info later.
–West Seattle’s King County Councilmember, Dow Constantine, has indeed filed to re-run in District 8, and along with Democrat challenger “Goodspaceguy” Nelson, has a Republican opponent, John Potter.
–Seattle City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen, who lives in WS but will be voted on by the entire city (like all the other council positions), is the only council candidate to draw no opposition, so — re-election congratulations already (pending write-ins, we suppose).
–West Seattle’s open seat on the Seattle School Board (Irene Stewart is leaving) has a crowded field of contenders: Two more candidates, Zeinab Ahmed and Edwin Fruit, filed today, joining Steve Sundquist, Dan Dempsey, and Maria Ramirez.
One more day left to file to run for something this fall. For WS residents, options include any of five Seattle City Council jobs, King County Prosecutor, King County Assessor, King County Councilmember for District 8, two Port of Seattle Commission jobs, and Seattle School Board member for District 6. Regarding the two district-specific jobs:
–So far Dow Constantine hasn’t officially filed for his County Council job (but apparently intends to); the always-interesting “Goodspaceguy” Nelson has filed to oppose DC in the Democratic primary; nobody’s filed to be a (brave) Republican in this race.
–Three candidates are now in the running for the WS-centered School Board seat that incumbent Irene Stewart is leaving — Steve Sundquist and Dan Dempsey, as previously mentioned, plus Maria Ramirez, who filed today.
One more WS-specific note; Seattle City Council seats are all citywide, but incumbent Tom Rasmussen does live here in WS; he has filed to run for re-election and so far is unopposed.
-Funny, we were just talking about Fauntleroy Place: A city council committee agenda that just landed in our inbox mentions a “possible vote” next Monday morning regarding the “alley vacation” that is a key part of the FP project.
-Another council committee has a briefing at 2 pm today regarding the latest version of the citywide skatepark plan. Two (updated from first version of this post; thanks to the reader who corrected us) proposed WS skateparks are currently on the list: Roxhill and Delridge.
-The city kicked off a push for low-flow showerheads today. If you haven’t tried ’em, you might be surprised. We converted to one during a remodel a few years back and it’s really not that dramatic a change.
Last weekend, we mentioned the jump-started campaign of Steve Sundquist for the WS-district Seattle School Board seat that Irene Stewart is relinquishing. The online campaign-filings list (which will be updated all week till the filing deadline Friday afternoon) now shows Sundquist has a challenger, Dan Dempsey. Can’t find an official campaign site for him but this appears to be a site he maintains. Meantime, the other WS-centered political position we’ll be voting for this year is King County Council District 8; incumbent Dow Constantine appears not to have filed papers as of this evening but had a campaign kickoff lunch today, so it’s a good bet he’ll be back on the ballot.
Just saw channel 7 in The Junction outside West 5 to present coverage of tonight’s City Council nightlife-ordinance hearing; the story’s not on their website as of this writing, but you can read about what happened (minus the WS angle) at the P-I site. Also at Slog, where Skylark gets a shoutout.
As the Times points out this morning, election season is about to begin. You’ve probably already noticed 
that one candidate has gotten a jump on things by blanketing West Seattle with yard signs (photo at right) even before officially filing to run. Steve Sundquist is the first declared candidate for the WS (District 6) school board seat that Irene Stewart is giving up. We don’t know much about him yet (here’s his site if you want to peruse for yourself), but we’ll miss Stewart, who we thought was doing a decent job in a difficult (to say the least) situation. As for when we’ll start voting – the primary is now earlier than ever – August 21.
The City Council just officially approved its $8 million plan (which will apparently take a year to draw up, so guess the viaduct’s not going anywhere any time soon) to try to figure out how we would all get around without a viaduct or a tunnel. Press release text after the click:Read More
The Herald‘s Letters to the Editor section yields another tale of interaction gone awry.
Tough month for Mayor Nickels. First he lost his father — now he has to deal with reports that his son has been indicted for alleged casino cheating. FRIDAY EARLY AM UPDATE: Citizen Rain (new local blog aggregator) has a link to Jake Nickels’ MySpace. (The cached version seems more interesting.)
Amusing high-tech tidbit about our County Councilmember Dow C on Slog.
With so many blossoming businesses in West Seattle — West 5, Skylark, etc. — concerned about the so-called “nightlife premises legislation” that’s been making its way through the City Council, we thought you might want to know the next hearing has just been set (June 4).
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