This afternoon, the Public Safety, Civil Rights and Technology Committee held a meeting, the entire purpose of which was to provide a forum for public comments on the renewal of Comcast’s franchise agreement with the City of Seattle to provide cable services. And comments they surely received.
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.
Thursday morning news roundup: election, housing, SPD
Since yesterday was Veterans Day, no election ballot counting happened. Counting resumes today, with another update late this afternoon. Just a trickle of election news coverage in the last day. Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, KING 5
Continue readingMorning news roundup: election, housing, labor, youth detention
Last week’s election continues to dominate the news coverage of the City Council. The latest vote tally shows the District 1 race to be a dead-heat, with the candidates separated by only 6 votes. Seattle P-I, Cascadia Advocate.
Continue readingComcast franchise agreement renewal on Thursday
On Thursday at 2:00pm, the Public Safety, Civil Rights, and Technology Committee will consider renewal of its franchise agreement with Comcast. A summary of the terms of the renewal is here. The full franchise agreement is here. The franchise agreement allows Comcast to offer “cable services” within the city limits, which for the purposes of this agreement just includes their video content (not Internet access). That doesn’t mean Comcast is planning to stop offering Internet; it just means that internet access is covered in a separate franchise agreement.
Continue readingMorning news roundup
There is still plenty of coverage of last week’s City Council election, particularly of positions 1 and 2 where the race has tightened while ballots continue to be counted. Seattle P-I, KIRO 7 , Crosscut, Seattle Globalist, KPLU, The other big news is yesterday’s votes on housing affordability. Seattle Times, Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, RealEstateRama, The Stranger Geek Wire has an article about the debate over whether Seattle should spend $5 million to pilot a municipal broadband program. This proposal generated a significant amount of discussion on Oct. 29th during the council’s budget review meetings (video – jump to 41:50 ).
Continue readingFull Council Meeting: All About the Linkage Fees
This afternoon’s full Council meeting, as expected, was all about the two agenda items related to commercial and residential linkage fees. Meeting details Meeting video
Continue readingCouncil Briefing 11-9-2015
The City Council’s regular Monday morning briefing was split into two parts this morning: a review of upcoming items, and a presentation from the Office of Intergovernmental Relations on the State of Washington’s upcoming legislative session in preparation for finalizing the city’s legislative agenda. Meeting agenda Meeting video
Continue readingThis Week at the City Council
On Monday, the City Council meets for its usual morning briefing and afternoon full council meeting.
Continue readingWeekly Recap: November 2-6, 2015
It was a very busy week for the City Council, even if their regular Monday meeting didn’t seem so.
Continue readingRoundup of election coverage
As expected, there has been much coverage of the Seattle City council election. Lots of speculation (but little consensus) about what the new look of the City Council will mean for Seattle. Here are links for your reading pleasure: Seattle Times: Seattle City Council to be younger, more female, diverse Seattle Times: Urbanists appear to be big winners in Seattle election The Stranger: New Ballot Count Shows… The Stranger: What do last night’s election results mean for the future of Seattle? Seattle P-I: Burgess up, Deborah Juarez and Lorena Gonzalez are new Seattle City Council Members Seattle Weekly: So much for …
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