I walked around the California Junction with a few concerned residents of Semi-Autonomous West Seattle yesterday. Sue Scharff organized the tour of Master Use Project notice boards, fenced off building sites, and construction cranes. There's definitely more going up in the area than West Seattle's business districts have seen in a couple of decades, maybe more. Sue was pretty clear that it's all too much — too much housing to add and too overwhelming to the character of the neighborhood. Like Ballard, West Seattle has enjoyed a "small town feel" that has drawn people to endure the mixed blessings of being a peninsula. The high and low bridges choke the hordes of others following you out there to live (up until now), but the high and low bridges also choke your access to places you might need to be — like your job, for instance.

Sue asked what seem like simple questions:

1. While pointing to the generally one-story strip of stores along California, "Why does any of this need to change?"

2. "Why are the developers always in charge?"

I've been thinking a lot about Sue's questions since our tour. Some variation of them comes up when I talk with people about Ballard. I can't quite figure out if the first question is the right one to ask. Neighborhood change seems inevitable. People who own property (like the owners of all those one-story buildings on California) get to decide what to do with their property within the bounds of the law. The people who own those buildings in the Junction today may decide tomorrow they want to redevelop. Or they may want cash for some reason and they may decide to sell to someone else who will face the same decision — keep it the same or change? None of it needs to change unless the owner decides he or she wants something from the property they don't have now — a different shape or maybe retirement cash. And if they change? None of the one-story buildings are using the full, allowed height under the zoning. Economically, it doesn't make sense for a developer to produce a new building at one story. Frankly, smart growth management means our larger environment really can't afford one-story buildings in business districts. Sue is, rightly, more concerned about the smaller environment of her neighborhood and what "more" means to our feeling of community, safety and health.

I'm not sure the "developers are always in charge." But they do get to do what we allow them to do by law and public pressure. I heard that the Junction business group and the West Seattle Chamber were meeting to develop a common position so they can talk with the developers of the new buildings about what kind of new businesses they'd like to see in the new storefronts. That's a very smart move.

Sue also asked, "Who is going to live in all these units?" That's the one question I don't think will go unanswered long. I think the units will rent, lease or sell as quickly as they are built. My concern, though, is whether the units will be affordable to the range of young, old, singles and families who would like to call Semi-Autonomous West Seattle home.

Patricia McInturff, the City's director of the Human Services Department for the past five years, officially retired last Wednesday. Alan Painter is the interim director and Sara Levin the interim deputy director. They are both fantastic, but Patricia's expertise, patience, humor will be missed so much. I'm not sure the impact of her departure is recognized. Over the course of a 30-year public service career she had worked in HIV/AIDS at the terrible dawn of the epidemic, piloted Senior Services, pushed through planning for the first Parks for All Levy, and steered the Human Services Department through the often rocky waters that come with that arena. I spoke with Paul Feldman, a veteran of Seattle's HIV/AIDS service and advocacy world, last week and he complimented Patricia with these words: "Patricia taught me a lot about how to be passionate and stay at -- instead of standing on -- the table. There was no one more loyal to the cause nor more vigilant than she. No one can work a budget -- or a councilmember for that matter -- like she can. Advocacy was an integral part of her work, and she often prevailed. To the benefit of people with and at risk of AIDS, she is one of my heroes. I think the world of her."

So do I.

Up until Saturday at 7:30 a.m. I didn't think I was going to make any of the Neighborhood Plan Updates forum I co-sponsored with the City Neighborhood Council. We crossed communication wires when we moved the date of the forum a while back, and I was scheduled for crew races Saturday morning. I'm in my club's boat competing in Opening Day May 3, and you just don't miss racing or practices once you've made the boat. Lucky for me Saturday was an awful, breezy, hailing morning! The water races were scratched at 7:30 a.m. and we raced on ergometers (stationary rowing machines) until 10 a.m. Then I zipped downtown for the second half of the forum. I'm glad I made it because it was a great gathering of institutional memory and "neighborhood power" passion. I missed hearing the presentation from Jim Diers, former director of the City's Department of Neighborhoods, but I certainly heard about it from others. He stirred up the crowd with his pitch to ensure the update process is community-driven, and not choked to death by City staff.

The forum is another piece of public input I'm using as the Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee reviews the Mayor's proposal for how to carry out the updates. As the Post-Intelligencer's article well describes, the leading issues brought up by forum participants were trust and competency. Trust came up repeatedly with respect to the ability of neighborhoods to truly direct their plan updates if City staff are the ones carrying out the planning work, and with respect to the City's track record carrying out plan recommendations.

See the blog entry previous to this one to understand the extra complicating factor of the budget.

More on neighborhood plan updates when the Planning, Land Use & Neighborhoods Committee resumes its committee discussion on the subject in later May.

This morning councilmembers received a briefing from Department of Finance staff on the projections for employment, housing stats, foreclosures, real estate activity and all the other economic indicators that go into predicting revenue to the City over the next few years. On the good side, Boeing has a healthy backlog of orders, meaning people will be needed to keep fulfilling those orders for 787's. Also, our housing market trails the national market in terms of the spike in foreclosures across the country. Also, on the good side, people around the world are buying U.S. products. Leaving aside the weak dollar, Seattle enjoys a bounce from all that trade passing through the Port.

On the not-so-good side, it looks like the slowdown in real estate activity may mean $10 million less in Real Estate Excise Tax revenue than we predicted for this year. Overall, people are spending less resulting in relatively lower growth in sales tax and Business & Occupation tax revenue. Higher inflation and rising health care benefits, combined with Council- and Mayor-supported initiatives to pay for more police officers and house more homeless people means we will likely have less money than we'd like to have in 2009-2010.

This all leads to the really-not-so-good prediction by staff that we'll be cutting the City's operating and capital budgets in 2009-2010. Get your pencils and calculators ready.

If I don't have my City Official hat on, I wish everyone would have left Squirrelman alone - most of all, the person who "turned in" his home up in the tree in Eastlake. Neighbors report he took care of the neighborhood, kept the area clean and was a good neighbor. I guess the main problem is he chose a deciduous tree and is easy to spot in the winter. On the bright side, neighbors heard about the City's mandate that Squirrelman move out of the tree (located on City property near I-5) and now Dave Csaky has an RV in which to live.

Too bad it's illegal to park it on City streets for more than a couple of days at a time. Mayor Nickels made Seattle Department of Transportation and City Light ease up on the eviction timeline and they offered Csaky a shelter bed. That's all good. Squirrelman is a great example of how hard it is to make shelter work for every person who needs it. City-supported shelter does its best to serve volume, but it also has rule to try to make it easier for 40, 50, or 75 people to sleep in one room. This guy doesn't want to leave his pet squirrel behind and, heck, he had terrific shelter already.

On the subject of shelter, I visited two shelters Tuesday night -- Hammond House for women and the Family & Adult Services Center which accommodates men at night. Both sites are downtown and take in approximately 40 people each. Hammond operates off a downtown alley with women heading downstairs into a basement that has been nicely painted and reconfigured a few times by caring volunteers. At FASC, a day drop-in space closes up at 7 p.m. and is cleaned up before the sleeping mats come out. At both sites, people can stay as many nights as they need. That means some women have been coming to Hammond House for years and some for days. You can get a meal and do your laundry at both. As we talk about what's needed to "end homelessness," there's a real need for basic, welcoming, safe places for people to spend time - day and night. I'm all for places like Connections where we help people get the support to be successful in job training. We need more Connections. The 80-year-old homeless woman at Hammond House probably isn't going to be super successful through job training. She does deserve a safe place to live. Until then she needs a safe place to spend her days and nights.

Yesterday was bookended by what I thought were two great policy events.

Bags and boxes...

First, I joined Council President Richard Conlin, Councilmember Tim Burgess and Mayor Greg Nickels for the announcement of Seattle's new tax on plastic grocery bags and ban on styrofoam food containers. These are ideas we've been developing since getting serious with the Zero Waste strategy we adopted last year. In Seattle alone, we use 360 million throw-away paper and plastic shopping bags annually. To cut that down, we're going to give you at least one cloth, reusable grocery bag so that you have a way to avoid paying a new 20-cents-per-bag tax starting January 1, 2009. Yes, one bag is insufficient for my own weekly shopping. I'll buy another couple of bags. For low-income people, I'm committed to getting them as many free bags as they need to make the switch.

The styrofoam ban also starts January 1, 2009, with full conversion to recyclable and compostable substitute packaging by July 1, 2010. My favorite Columbia City neighborhood pizza place, Tutta Bella, participated in the press conference and was the poster child for great composting and recycling. Many of the substitute materials are corn-based, which presents its own set of sustainability issues, but I think it's a good step.

...Buildings and artists

My last event at City Hall yesterday evening (before heading over to the Southwest District Council meeting) was a passionate, emotional, reasoned, driven forum on preserving the arts and artists in Seattle's neighborhoods, specifically Capitol Hill and the Pike/Pine area. Many of us have watched as formerly gritty, low-scale, low-rent Pike/Pine has become the "place to be." Being the "in" place signals to the market that there's money to be made. Fifteen years ago I knew someone who lived in a Pike/Pine loft, which meant she lived above an auto parts shop in an unfinished space. Now lofts in the area are shiny, new and expensively finished. The recent sale and subsequent rent hikes at the Oddfellows Hall on Capitol Hill sparked a lot of people to get active around affordability for artists, but this is an issue all over town. Speakers last night made a compelling argument that Capitol Hill's artists “ecosystem” is endangered by new development, rising rents and general displacement forces. The forum was long on passion (Hallie Kuperman from Century Ballroom tearfully recounted how she had just, hours before, signed a new lease keeping the Century Ballroom open at the Oddfellows Hall, but with a 200 percent rent increase), but a little light in specific ideas to make the ecosystem whole and healthy. Councilmembers Licata, Rasmussen, Godden, Harrell and myself attended last night. I think there are some great ideas to look into (property tax breaks, land-banking, density bonuses, development rights to be sold, etc.). Councilmember Licata and I met this morning to hash out how to proceed analyzing possible solutions. I think we'll be asking a few of the great people who spoke last night to meet as a team, review the problems and possible solutions, and then make recommendations about what might work on Capitol Hill and, maybe, elsewhere.