The City Council and the Mayor made a big joint announcement today: a plan for increasing the parental leave benefit for employees of the City of Seattle as well as adding a paid family leave benefit.
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.
News roundup: OPA, business licenses, and ramps to nowhere
Good morning! Lots of bits and pieces in the news this morning.
Continue readingNotes from this morning’s Council Briefing
The Council members came back from their three-day weekend ready to dig in, so there’s lots going on.
Continue readingNews roundup: OPA staff and archives
The news is light, but interesting, this morning-after-fireworks.
Continue readingThis week in Council Chamber
Happy Independence Day! With the holiday, the usual Monday meetings have been moved to Tuesday, and the usual Tuesday committee meetings will be on Friday. Tuesday morning’s Council Briefing should be brief — there are no presentations scheduled. Tuesday afternoon’s Full Council meeting should also be short as there is only one legislative matter on the agenda and it’s expected to sail through with little discussion and no controversy. On the other hand, this week’s Introduction and Referral Calendar is packed with new legislation, including: a resolution beginning the hearing process for Swedish Health Services’ application for an alley vacation …
Continue readingCouncil puts Seattle City Light’s Strategic Plan under the microscope
Following on last week’s meeting of the Select Committee on Seattle City Light Strategic Planning that heard an overview of the Strategic Plan, this week the committee drilled down into the details.
Continue readingNews roundup: Kubly and car-sharing
It’s all about transportation (with a dollop of ethics) this morning.
Continue readingNews roundup: guns, homeless, and the Jungle
Crosscut has a great summary of the highlights from yesterday’s #SEAHomeless media-blitz. Q13, MyNorthwest and Guns.com cover the blowback on the Council’s decision this week to require SPD to destroy surplus guns rather than resell them. Q13 discusses the Jungle with Mayor Ed Murray. MyNorthwest reports on public comment from the joint Seattle/King County hearing on humans services, homelessness and the opioid addiction epidemic. SeattleMet reports on the dubious report delivered by an industry consultant to the Council last week on the topic of secure scheduling.
Continue readingNews roundup: Guns, Ducks, AirBnB, and the Jungle
Lots of stuff in the news today. Plus the #SEAHomeless conversation, which I will recap tomorrow in full.
Continue readingIt’s Time for New Leadership on the Homelessness Crisis
In this gig, I spend far more time reading and listening than I do writing, and over the last several months much of that time has been spent learning about homelessness and how people are trying to address it. It’s a big, complicated problem, but the way we talk about it and let ourselves get rat-holed in side issues has given it an aura of intractability. Seattle is a city with money, resources, skilled people, and lots and lots of compassion. There is no reason our city can’t make a dent in our homelessness problem. And yet, over the past …
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