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Nov

23

What We Heard: Mike McGinn’s Open Source Transiton

Filed Under Politics, Seattle | 1 Comment

Great City is proud to have participated in Seattle mayor elect Mike McGinn’s “Open Source Transition”. To refresh your memory, the transition team asked a group of “community ambassadors” to solicit input from the public on three questions:

1. How do we build the strongest possible team to achieve the policy objectives and values set forth?

2. How do we build public trust in the new administration?

3. What do you view as the incoming administration and the city’s greatest challenge — what should we do first out of the gate?

We received 165 responses to the transition teams questions, which we have synthesized into an executive summary. If you would like to read what we heard, GC-McGinnTransitin.

Nov

13

Help Out With Mayor Elect Mike McGinn’s Transition

Filed Under Election, Politics, Seattle | Leave a Comment

sunbeams

Hello Great City friends,

Members of the Great City board and other civic leaders were invited by Mayor-Elect, and former Great City Executive Director, Mike McGinn to provide some transition advice. We were asked to serve as ambassadors by reaching out to our networks and seeking advice for the incoming administration. Mike himself explains the intent here.

As some of the best thinkers on urbanism, land use and sustainability in the city, we wanted to invite all of Great City’s friends to participate. Click on this link and fill in the form. The transition team has asked that we have comments to them by Monday, November 23. In order to meet that goal, we ask that you have comments to us by Sunday, November 22 at 6pm. We’ll then synthesize and compile those comments and provide them to the transition team.

This is your first opportunity to help shape the incoming administration. We look forward to sharing what you have to say with the transition team. Let’s push them to build the Great City we all know is possible.

Oct

23

Action Alert: Ensure Council Designates Funding for Bike/Ped Projects

Filed Under Bicycling, Policy, Politics, Seattle, Streets For People, Sustainability, Transportation, planning, walking | Leave a Comment

This next Monday, October 26, Seattle City Council will be considering whether or not to repeal the Employee Hours Tax (aka, the “Head Tax”). Regardless of how you feel about the repeal of the tax, the potential loss of a funding mechanism for Bridging the Gap sends a dangerous signal about Seattle’s transportation priorities. The Mayor has stated he wants to make Seattle into the most pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly city in the United States. This is the time for us to walk our talk! The improvements identified by both plans make it safer for our children to walk to school and in their neighborhood. They help our seniors to continue to be mobile. They help us reduce our reliance on the automobile and reduce our carbon footprint. They also ensure the health of our business districts and other community places.

Please email city council members today and urge them to allocate funding sources for bike and pedestrian infrastructure. And if you are free, please consider attending the city council hearing on Monday at 5:30 pm at the Council Chambers in City Hall.

Jul

30

Want 600 miles of new bike facilities?

Filed Under Bicycling, Environment, Pedestrians, Politics, Streets For People, Sustainability, Transit, Transportation | 1 Comment

We have a tremendous opportunity to support a more bike-friendly future- please submit your comments by Friday to make the right choice for our region.

The Puget Sound Regional Council is updating the current regional transportation plan. Five alternatives have been analyzed, and the choice made will greatly impact how we plan our communities and get around. (You can read the draft environmental impact statement of Transportation 2040 here.)

Out of five alternatives:

- Only Alternative Five makes significant reductions in all harmful pollutants measured.

- Only Alternative Five comes close to meeting the goals established in state law for reducing vehicle miles traveled.

- Only Alternative Five makes significant investments in bicycling for transportation. It would use only one percent more of our transportation funding to build 600 more miles of bicycle trails and other facilities!  None of the other options focus on walking, biking or transit to solve congestion and health problems.

Click here and tell the Puget Sound Regional Council it’s time to change our transportation priorities.

Your voice will help create more sustainable communities.

Mar

16

Affordability, Sustainablity and Livability: Thoughts on how we debate our future

Filed Under Innovation, Politics, Sustainability, The Bottom Line, Zoning | Leave a Comment

Originally posted on Facebook

After spending a lot of time in 2008 watching local land use debates and discussions I found myself feeling more than a little frustrated. Where was all this going? Council discussions seemed to lack focus on a broader agenda for the city. That agenda could be the Comprehensive Plan but that document has become a repository for ‘good ideas’ and political statements. One would often hear “sure put it in the Comp Plan; it doesn’t mean we actually have to do it.”

But what if someone asked me “what should our larger focus be, Roger?” I felt as though I needed to at least think through my answer. At the time it seemed to me that it all came down to making the city affordable to a wide range of people, supporting a self-sufficient and sustainable city and making the city livable.

So I proposed that we create a series based on these three ideas and solicit people’s best and most succinct thoughts on each topic. The Affordability, Sustainability, Livability series was born. Thanks to Shawna at the DJC we were on our way to at least sparking some discussion about the bigger picture. Seattle is missing a determined effort define what we want and measure our progress toward getting it–whatever it is.

That is why the whole series ends up being about definition and measurement. My experience thus far is there isn’t much enthusiasm out there for defining and measuring anything. Defining and measuring doesn’t make for great campaign slogans.”Vote for me and I will work to get us a clear idea of how far we have to go to effectively address the issues we face as a city!” Not exactly “I Like Ike!”

Unfortunately discussion on zoning, for example, tends to fall along party lines, not Democrat or Republican, but various interest groups claiming they will lose if certain legislation passes. Whether its a parking lot in Capitol Hill or incentive zoning its always a scrimmage between the developer who needs to get the project moving, the local neighborhood and parties on either side that see this particular project as representative of “what’s wrong with Seattle.”

If this does not substantially change our city will not be able to make progress on addressing big issues like the viaduct, climate change and the health of Puget Sound. And our city simply cannot prepare for coming growth amid such economic turmoil by having a house to house fight (see Edith Macefield) on issues like land use and housing. It will simply be a case of Bambi Meets Godzilla. We will be crushed by events and we’ll just have to live with whatever happens to our natural and built environment and our economy.

I hope that doesn’t happen.

If you have thoughts on livability (50 words) please submit to them to Shawna (shawnag@djc.com) by Thursday of this week. It would be great to have you and others you know weigh in.

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