Seattle Forward

Parking Perspective . . . Again

"I can never find a parking spot when I go downtown or to Pioneer Square."

"It's so frustrating to try and park on Capitol Hill at night, there is no street parking."

"As a small business owner, I watch my customers drive by and just keep going.  They can't find spots on the street."

The above complaints are heard all around Seattle.  That's why Councilmember Mike O'Brien and I started asking questions and challenging assumptions when the Council began consideration of Mayor McGinn's proposed 2011 budget this past September.  How does the City manage on-street parking? What are our specific goals with regard to on-street parking? What drives our decisions about parking meter rates? 

More Transit Funding Needed Really Fast

I sat through two briefings this week that strongly reinforced the urgent need for more local transit funding in Seattle-King County. While I'm writing about our local challenges in transit service, I know leaders in Snohomish and Pierce counties face some of the same issues.

Here's the bottom line: Metro transit service is going to be massively cut back over the next several years due to lack of funding. The equivalent of all weekend service or all service on the east side of Lake Washington could vanish. (See chart below.) These terrible reductions in transit service will happen when we actually need just the opposite.

Michelle Alexander at Mt. Zion Baptist Tonight

The author of a provocative book on America's experiment with mass incarceration will speak tonight at 7 p.m. at Mt. Zion Baptist Church at 19th and East Madison Street.  The event is open to the public.

I have read Alexander's book.  It's listed in my current reading column at the left side of my blog.  I'm going to hear her and will be writing about this topic much more in the near future. 

Arizona Shooting Lession: Taking Care

The tragic shootings in Tucson, Arizona earlier this month bring into sharp focus a key public policy issue.  How do we care for individuals with serious mental health challenges? So far, the answer to this question is not very well at all!

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a national advocate for improved care for the mentally ill, recently wrote a concise and well argued piece in the Wall Street Journal documenting the problem.  Here's an excerpt—

A 2007 study by the U.S. Justice Department found that 56% of state prisoners, 45% of federal prisoners, and 64% of local jail inmates suffer from mental illnesses.

So, we have a choice.  Pay for effective treatment before problems—like the Arizona shootings—occur or pay a lot more after predictable tragedies occur later.  I favor for former. 

This issue will arise soon in another context here in Washington State. Because of state revenue declines, the Legislature is closing prisons and releasing prisoners back to the streets.  It's essential that the Legislature allocate some of the saved expenses for community supervision and monitoring of the released prisoners.  We erred when closing state mental health hospitals and failing to provide effective community-based treatment services and we will err again if we release prisoners without proper community-based supervision and monitoring, such as the Neighborhood Corrections Initiative that has been so successful. 

 

Standing Against Child Prostitution

These are remarks I delivered last night at Town Hall regarding the prostitution trafficking of our children.  Over 700 people packed the hall and heard several presentations from local experts and Deborah Richardson, a national advocate from Atlanta. You can watch video of the entire event here.

Good evening and thank you for coming out tonight for this important discussion.

Wow!  Seeing so many of you is very encouraging.  Your presence is a powerful statement that Seattle will protect our children.  We will not allow the exploitation and horrors of human trafficking to continue in our city.

In the summer of 2008, my first year as a Council member, I read a report that made me angry.  It was a city-commissioned study written by Dr. Debra Boyer . . . Dr. Boyer is here with us tonight.  The report documented the brutal reality of children being prostituted on our streets, right here in our own backyard.

I resolved right then that the City must do more to stop this terrible, terrible tragedy . . . do more to help rescue our children were being coerced into a horror that is unimaginable.  Some of these kids are 12 years old . . . twelve. 

Collaboration or Conflict: Council-Mayor Relations

Earlier this week, I was reading a local blog that is dedicated to transportation issues and noted the repetition of what is now an almost constant theme about conflict between the City Council and the Mayor. 

Well, as Mark Twain once wrote, "the report of my death was an exaggeration." (Mr. Twain wrote that phrase in a note to a friend in May 1897.  An image of the actual note is above.)

Journalists and political commentators all love conflict.  They seek it out, they report it, they sustain it, and sometimes they even embellish it.  Conflict is the coin of the realm, so to speak, for the media. 

So, I thought I'd add a different perspective from inside City Hall. 

Town Hall Forum: Child Prostitution

The above forum at Town Hall on January 20 at 7 p.m. is an initiative of the Women's Funding Alliance and the City Council is a co-sponsor of the event.  The keynote speaker will be Deborah Richardson from the Women's Funding Network, a national leader on this issue.  A panel of local experts, including Dr. Debra Boyer, the local anthropologist who did the ground-breaking study of child prostitution in Seattle-King County in 2008, will respond to Richardson.  There will be opportunity for audience participation as well.

If you question or doubt whether this is truly a problem worthy of all the attention, read this story in The Seattle Times or this editorial from last Sunday's Times. You can read my earlier posts on this topic here. 

Tickets for the event cost $5 and may be purchased at www.brownpapertickets.com.