Port recall
After 22 years on the commission, Pat Davis may finally be running aground at the Port of Seattle.
Last week, a King County Superior Court judge approved a petition filed by Renton resident Chris Clifford to recall Davis. In it, Clifford accuses her of malfeasance for signing a memo last year that granted an extra year’s salary of nearly $340,000 to retiring Port Chief Mic Dinsmore.
After the story broke in the Seattle P-I, Dinsmore declined to take the payout, which Davis insists her fellow commissioners agreed to. But, in a five-point ballot synopsis filed with the court, Clifford calls the deal a gift of public money that no one at the Port voted on.
Clifford must now edit the synopsis down to 200 words for the judge’s review, which is expected this week. He will then need to collect nearly 150,000 valid voter signatures to get the measure on the ballot in August or November.
Teamster strike vote
The truck drivers who haul editions of Seattle’s two metro dailies have decided they’re not happy with The Seattle Times and its demand for a wage freeze: On May 20, members of Teamsters Local 174 were nearly unanimous in voting to authorize a strike in the event of a breakdown in bargaining.
The Teamsters’ current contract with the Times Co., which manages the Seattle P-I’s circulation under a joint operating agreement between the papers, expired Feb. 28. Union negotiators said this week they will sign another one-month extension, taking the contract through June. But, with lines drawn over the wage freeze and certain changes in contract language that the union says would give the Times more power, the two sides agreed last week to call in a federal mediator.
More Trident arrests
Another Mother’s Day, another trio of arrests at Naval Base Kitsap, home to the Trident submarine’s nuclear arsenal at Bangor.
The arrests took place at dawn May 14, the day after Mother’s Day, as 35 demonstrators lined the road to the base, waving signs at naval personnel as they arrived for work. In what has become an annual ritual, three demonstrators — Michael Hill of Elbe, Joy Goldstein of Vashon, and an Ann O. of Waldron — then stepped into the road and were immediately arrested by the Kitsap County Sheriff.
Unlike last year’s Mother’s Day protest, when three people who blocked the road spent a day in jail, the three were booked and released.
—Cydney Gillis