This will be the last news roundup for the week. Happy Thanksgiving to all; stay safe and healthy, keep your gatherings small, wear a mask, and be thankful for all of the front-line healthcare workers who will spend the next two days caring for COVID patients in our hospitals. Here’s the news.
Continue readingAuthor: Kevin Schofield
Kevin Schofield is a freelance writer and the founder of Seattle City Council Insight, a web site providing independent news and analysis of the Seattle City Council.
After graduating from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts degree, he worked for Microsoft Corporation for 26 years. That culminated in a term as Chief Operations Officer for Microsoft Research, the division of the company focused on advancing the state of the art in computing. Upon leaving Microsoft in 2014 he decided to embrace his love of writing.
Kevin volunteers at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, where he also serves on the Board of Directors. He is also Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California.
Beyond writing, his personal passions are his twin daughters, photography, cooking, and playing the guitar. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Tuesday news roundup
We’re talking budget.
Continue readingCouncil passes 2021 budget, with one last cut to SPD
The Council spent nearly the entire day today finishing up the city’s 2021 budget, between the final Budget Committee Meeting this morning, and then a final stamp of approval this afternoon at the weekly City Council meeting. Most of it was routine procedure — except for about an hour spent on one last-minute proposal to trim a bit more out of SPD’s budget.
Continue readingJuarez gives a blunt assessment of police reform, Council dynamics, city politics
This morning during the final budget committee meeting for the year as the City Council debated one last trim to the SPD budget, Council member Debora Juarez delivered a blunt, unexpected and surprising five-minute speech, in which she touched on the expectations and pace for police reform, the current adversarial political culture, and her hopes that we can come together as a city and nation and start healing. Video and full transcript are below.
Continue readingMonday news roundup
A car brigade protest visits Council members’ homes on the eve of the budget vote, and more.
Continue readingSPD budget changes, revisited: some corrections, a better explanation, and a last-minute change in the works
Last Friday I posted a summary of the Council’s budget deliberations last week, including where they landed on SPD’s 2021 budget. Since then I’ve had several email exchanges with the Council’s staff, as they pointed out some inaccuracies in the numbers I posted (and they humbly admitted that they didn’t really explain it all very well). The Council’s unwillingness to try to impose a hiring freeze on SPD in 2021 was widely (but not always accurately) reported over the past few days, and it has created blowback from advocacy groups over the notion that SPD might actually grow in size …
Continue readingThis week in Council Chambers
The Council finishes up the 2021 budget tomorrow.
Continue readingCouncil talks a lot, but makes few changes to its 2021 budget plan
It took a day and a half of deliberations, but in the end the City Council made just a handful of tweaks to its planned amendments to the 2021 city budget, and is now poised to give its final approval to the budget package.
Continue readingFriday news roundup
The West Seattle Bridge will be repaired, the Council wraps up its 2021 budget work, and more. Congratulations! You made it to the weekend.
Continue readingMayor Durkan decides on repairing West Seattle Bridge instead of immediate replacement
This morning Mayor Durkan announced that the city will move forward with repairing the cracked main span of the West Seattle Bridge, with the expectation that it will reopen by mid-2022, restore the bridge to its original expected lifetime, and push out building a replacement for up to 40 years. However, she also said that SDOT will start studying an eventual replacement strategy now, and it will approach Sound Transit about jointly building a third span to West Seattle that could incorporate light rail, bicycles and pedestrians.
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