Parks parting
This week marks the final Board of Park Commissioners meeting for four members who have resigned to protest recent board changes made by the Seattle City Council.
On Jan. 16, the City Council passed legislation that spreads the board’s appointees evenly between the council and the mayor, who now appoints all seven members (subject to council approval). In the future, the council and mayor will each appoint three commissioners, with the board itself choosing a seventh.
The move was prompted by complaints that the Park Board, which takes advisory votes on Parks Department projects, fails to listen to citizens. But in their resignation letter, the four departing board members — Angela Belbeck, Jack Collins, Debbie Jackson and chair Kate Pflaumer — say it’s the council that has failed to listen to them, cancelling meetings with the board and confusing citizens about its work.
The letter notes that the council intends the new configuration to improve communications. But, given “the council’s lack of interest and communication with the board,” the letter states, “we find this hard to follow as a rationale for institutional change.”
—Cydney Gillis
It works!
Plymouth Housing Group shared some good news with the Seattle City Council last week when it reported that a pilot program it started in June 2006 had placed 20 chronically homeless people in housing by the end of August — and 18 of them are still in their units.
The Begin At Home program, which is located in a newly furbished building Plymouth operates at Second and Stewart in downtown Seattle, uses the “housing first” model that the city’s Human Services Department is switching to as part of the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness.
It works, Plymouth staff members told the council’s Housing Committee, because the city provided $200,000 for the kind of extra services, such on-site nurse care and case management, that chronically homeless persons need in order to address longtime medical problems or navigate the difficulties of getting an apartment with no references.
“The piece that’s been missing for us for years is the medical nursing piece,” said Plymouth’s Tara Conner. “Bringing that in onsite in housing is a phenomenal success.”
—Cydney Gillis
Bikes rolling
Soon, Seattle’s Bicycle Master Plan will have $32 million for over 440 miles of interconnected cycling routes, weaving an infrastructure of cycling-designated routes, I-5 overpasses, “sharrows” (shared, cyclist-auto lanes), a Ballard bike bridge, and expanded trail and bike-lanes through the snarls of traffic.
The final proposal, scheduled for early February, will be followed by a one-month comment period. View the draft plan at www.seattle.gov/transportation/bikemaster.htm.
—Chris Miller
For copy of actual issue, go to https://www.realchangenews.org/2007/01/24/jan-24-2007-entire-issue