Yesler Terrace design debuts
In case you're wondering what office buildings and residential towers are going to look like at the First Hill site of today's Yesler Terrace, the last of the Seattle Housing Authority's old "garden communities," your chance has arrived: On Nov. 12, the housing authority plans to debut the long-awaited site design that it will use to redevelop Yesler Terrace starting in 2011 or later.
The project calls for putting some 4,000 condos and apartments at the 28-acre site, along with replacing today's 581 low-income units, at a cost of $240 million to $310 million. The design will be presented to the Yesler Terrace Citizen Review Committee at a meeting starting at 5 p.m. at the Yesler Community Center, 917 E. Yesler Way, Seattle. An open house before the meeting starts at 4 p.m.
State goofs on felon voting
It took years to pass House Bill 1517, a new state law that restores voting rights to people convicted of felonies. But it will be another year before the Secretary of State's Office puts the right information about who can vote in its Voters' Pamphlet.
In this year's pamphlet, mailed out prior to the Nov. 3 election, the state goofed on explaining the law, which may have kept some people from voting, says Lea Zengage, Executive Director of JusticeWorks, a Seattle advocacy and support group for ex-offenders.
Since the law took effect July 26, JusticeWorks has been running a voter registration drive aimed at the state's estimated 167,000 felons ("Released felons can vote again," RC, Aug. 5). The new law says those convicted in Washington state can now vote if both their prison and parole time are over and they are paying off any court debt. Those convicted in other states or in federal court are eligible to vote again upon release from prison.
Text in the Voters' Pamphlet, however, lumped the two categories together, making it unclear that freed federal or out-of-state felons can vote now. "The majority of people who have a felony conviction and are living in Washington were convicted in Washington State Court," says an e-mail from the Secretary of State's Office to JusticeWorks, so "the information in the pamphlet is correct for their situation."
Zengage says that's not much help to JusticeWorks, which has registered about 700 felons since the law took effect. The group urged the state to issue a press release correcting the information prior to the election, but it declined, she says, leaving the group to fight the misinformation and the confusion it has created