The all-important “Round 2” meeting of the budget committee is taking place now. You can watch it live here. The council chambers are packed with citizens who wanted to speak on behalf of specific budget items, and committee chair Licata expanded the public comment section of the meeting from 10 minutes to a full hour. It’s very clear that Council member Sawant’s calls for people to show up and speak were heard — many people spoke in favor of more funding for the homelessness issue, affordable housing, 12 weeks of parental leave, municipal broadband, and other items in Sawant’s progressive agenda. …
Continue readingMonday morning news roundup
A potpourri of news and op-ed coverage of the Seattle City Council this morning.
Continue readingThis week at the City Council: budget decision time
This week the City Council is heavily focused on getting the 2016 budget done. With few exceptions, everything else has been cancelled.
Continue readingSaturday morning news roundup: election, budget, parental leave, jail
Election coverage continues, and discussion of the 2016 city budget is ramping up.
Continue readingFriday morning news roundup: election, housing, Key Arena, municipal broadband
More election coverage this morning, especially on the tight District 2 race and the practically-dead-heat District 1 race. KING 5, KOMO, The Stranger. Capitol Hill Times has an article about the recently-passed housing legislation. Seattlish has an op-ed asking the City Council to “build all the things.” KING5 has a story about a bizarre inquiry that the Mayor and council President Tim Burgess received about redeveloping Key Arena. In the “media reporting on the media” category, MyNorthwest.com reports on local talk radio host Dori Monson’s rant about the proposal in front of the City Council to pilot municipal broadband.
Continue readingComcast public comment session
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 readingThursday 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 ).
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