East Precinct Police Appreciation: your letters, please!

From: Veronica Pugh <veronica@sngi.org>

No EPCPC (East Precinct Crime Prevention Coalition) meeting this month due to our participation in the East Precinct Picnic Saturday, July 21st, 1-4pm.

Police Appreciation - EPCPC will sponsor an East Precinct Police Appreciation in August. Capitol Hill Times has agreed to print a few stories from community members about why we appreciate the East Precinct Officers. If you’d like to participate in this project, please send a <200 word letter to the the editor Doug Schwartz <editor@capitolhiltimes.com> by Tuesday, July 31st. For more info about how you can participate with the police appreciation contact me.

Thanks,

Veronica Pugh
Seattle Neighborhood Group
EPCPC Program Coordinator
veronica@sngi.org
www.sngi.org
(206) 322-9330

Saturday: Cleanup and Precinct Picnic

Jon Vandemoortel (Mr. MaDCAP) writes:

The MaDCAP cleanup will commence as usual beginning with Starbuck's coffee at 9:45. It will end around noon. The barbecue portion has been canceled, however. The East Precinct station, located at 1519 12th Avenue, is having their annual picnic between 1:00 and 4:00 that day, and we are all invited to attend. Over the years, and especially so these past few, the officers of the East Precinct have worked many hours to ensure that we have a safe neighborhood in which to live. The Miracle on Madison simply would not have occurred without their assistance. Thus, you are encouraged to stop by their gathering after the cleanup for food and festivities. Thanks.

See you at the cleanup at 9:45 AM, Saturday July 21st (we meet behind the Prince of Wales apartments at 20th & Denny), and then again at the East Precinct at 1 PM:

Picnic at the Precinct

When: Saturday, July 21
From: 1-4 PM
Location: East Precinct 1519 12th Avenue, Seattle

All East Precinct Community members are invited!
Enjoy dancing, music, food, magic, balloons, raffles and Fun!
Get a precinct tour, meet local officers, Swat, K-9 and More

(click on image for larger version)

"Don't mess with Ms. Esther"

Please join me in congratulating Esther Pounds on her retirement from her long-held position as the resident manager of Capitol Hill Housing's Hazel Plaza apartments at 21st Ave E. & E. John. Let's thank her for her many years of hard work for the neighborhood, and wish her all the best for the future.

Below is a letter from Capitol Hill Housing's Executive Director, Chuck Weinstock, which tells it much better than I could, followed by a note from Esther herself. Chuck is also retiring soon from his similarly long-held position at Capitol Hill Housing. I'd also like to thank him for his many years of dedication to affordable housing, as well as his keen interest in all of the housing and development issues around Capitol Hill and Miller Park. For a quick review of Capitol Hill Housing's mission, you might read the articles in the July 92 or Spring 96 editions of the Miller Times.

Esther and Chuck epitomize all that we love in Capitol Hill Housing: they work hard to provide safe, legal, drug-free affordable housing that is a pleasure to have in the neighborhood.

(Click on the letters for a larger version)

Evelyn Lewis sentencing cancelled

(this is the court case we were asked to write letters about)

Hello All,
Would you pass the word that the sentencing has been cancelled and Ms. Lewis wants to obtain a new attorney and withdraw her guilty pleas. Her next hearing will be on July 9, 2007 at 4:00 PM. At that time Ms. Lewis should appear with her new attorney who will formally set her motion to withdraw her pleas. Justin Monroe, on behalf of the State, will object to this motion. We will keep you advised of all the court dates involved in this process. Please feel free to call me for more details. 206-423-9756. Thank you for your patience in this matter.

All the Best,
Ellen O'Neill-Stephens
206-423-9756

Sonja Richter will be missed, we must insist on equally energetic and flexible successor

A neighbor with a business on Union writes:

Nice article on a decent, hard-working civil servant who throughout her career attempted to defy the Peter Principle and break Parkinson’s Law…
Thanks!

Capitol Hill Times article (5/3/07)

Sonja has been our crime prevention coordinator for most of the the time that the Miller Park Neighborhood Association has existed, except for when she spent a while working in Lake City. You'll find her mentioned in almost every copy of the Miller Times!

As far as I know, the City has not yet assigned a replacement for her!

Andrew

Waiting for the Mayor's visit
to Miller Park

Demonstrating an unsafe gate
at an apartment building: it's now been fixed, thanks to Sonja

Small joys....

For 20+ years I've been cleaning up the trash that people seem to relish discarding in our neighborhood. Some of it is mundane, some of it is noteworthy, some of it is truly bizarre.

Last weekend I came out of my house and found the most remarkable little gift at the corner of 20th & John:

Some kind people had not only tidied up their beer-bottles and cans, they'd even carefully pickup up the shards of the bottle they'd dropped and tidied them into the carrier also.

In many "fancy pants" neighborhoods, people would probably be incensed to find such trash awaiting them, but here such displays of thoughtfulness bring a little joy into our jaded lives.

Picking it up and carrying it to the trash was so much easier than picking up the widely scattered fragments of 40-ouncers used to be.

And yes, finding Alaskan Amber rather than the traditional Olde English probably is is yet another sign of gentrification.

One suggestion, gentle drunks: you left me two half-finished bottles of Alaskan Amber. Next time, share a bottle and leave an un-opened one for me. But, thank you, anyway.

Farewell Dan Okada; Welcome Tienney Milnor

Our neighborhood has benefited for many years from the City Attorney's "Precinct Liason Program". Assistant City Attorneys, assigned to the East Precinct, have been invaluable in dealing with Liquor License applications and renewals, Good Neighbor Agreements with bars and minimarts, and many other services they can tell you about.

Dan Okada has been our attorney for several years: his masterpiece, for which we will be always grateful, was the negotiations with the owner of Club Chocolate City, which resulted in that bar relinquishing its liquor license. Dan has now returned to prosecuting cases for the City. He has our eternal thanks, although he (very ethically) refused our small gift at a recent cleanup.

His replacement is Tienney Milnor, who worked alongside him for a couple of months to learn the ropes. The City's directory is outdated: Tienney and Dan have essentially swapped jobs and offices, but the links still show their old phone numbers.

Tienney's already hard at work attending neighborhood meetings, and is working on the public safety issues at the 23rd & Union shopping area - things got bad there about the time that Club Chocolate City closed, although the crowds hanging out in the two areas seemed different.

Do contact Tienney (206-684-4375, tienney.milnor@seattle.gov ) if there are public safety issues that might benefit from her help. And don't be shy about dropping Dan a note to thank him for all his help.

Video of Sally Clark's Committee Meeting at Miller

Streaming Video of Councilmember Sally Clark's Economic Development and Neighborhood Committee meeting held on 3/15/2007 in the Miller neighborhood is now available on the the SeattleChannel website:

http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=2180705

You'll need RealPlayer (or most web browsers) to play it. You can stop, start, rewind and FAST FORWARD!

The first 6 minutes are a very animated introduction from Sally.

From 6 minutes to about 23 minutes, members of the public gave testimony about the Mayor's proposed nightlife ordinance (see the bottom of Sally's webpage), including some very poignant testimony from the Barclay Court community (Seattle Times article). Andrew's testimony (also quoted in the Seattle Times article) is at ~ 15 minutes.

The last 25 minutes of the meeting (2:03:00 to the end) feature a presentation from the Miller Park/MaDCAP community, featuring Andrew Taylor, Jon Vandemoortel and Heidi Ob'bayi talking about present and future issues in the Miller area, Chuck Weinstock from Capitol Hill Housing (talking about affordable housing) and Ellen O'Neill-Stephens, a King County Prosecutor, whose neighborhood taskforce is helping to address the public safety issues along Madison (and now 23rd & Union).

Thoughts/questions about the survey

(arrived by E-mail)

Hi Andrew, looking at your survey results, I'm concerned that it has been
co-opted by developers/builders. I suggest you might have a vote on the
matter of 24th and check id's of all voters on issue- we've done this in
our neighborhood. You may be surprised.

Andrew's response:

I was concerned that one side or another might try to "stuff the ballot box". Survey answers come with the date/time and the IP address of the sender. Looking at those showed no signs of any worrying trends. The only multiple replies from a given IP address (3 each) were from the City of Seattle, Microsoft and Comcast and each cluster had differing responses to the questions. (Yes I might be fooled by dynamically assigned IP addresses). Looking at the timing of responses gave no concerns either.

So I believe that everyone was honest and aboveboard (many thanks, folks!) and hence that the results truly reflect the views of those Miller neighbors who care about these issues.

Thanks again, people.

Andrew

PS: I'm clearly new at surveying people, so guidance is always welcome.

------------------------

(comment to blog post)

Thanks for the info. Just wanted to mention that not all non-Miller Park people should be totally discounted! I used to live in Miller Park, but recently moved down the hill into Madison Valley. So I'm not an MP resident, but it's not like I'm some disinterested party voting from Ballard or something. :)

Andrew's response:

Good point. I didn't ask for names or addresses: didn't want to scare anyone away. Suggestions for next time?

------------------------

(From comment on a previous post)

So my question is, do we tell the Miller Greens developer, city, Frazier Park folks etc what our opinions are? It seems to me we should. I assume we were going to share our results with everyone if they were negative on Miller Greens; we should do the same since they are positive.

Andrew's response:

I shared the info with the developer and the Frazier Park folks before posting it here, and then sent copies to appropriate Councilmembers, DPD and the Mayor's Office.

Miller Greens survey results available

Many, many thanks to all of you who took the time to answer the survey about the Miller Greens project at 24th and Thomas. Here's the answer to the BIG question:

and here are all the answers (as a PDF).


Background: Frazier Park neighbors approached Miller Park Neighborhood Association (MPNA) seeking support for their position on the Miller Greens project, and supplied both a proposed draft resolution, and a copy of the resolution adopted by the Greater Madison Valley Community Council (GMVCC).

Methodology: I turned the GMVCC's resolution into a web-based survey and posted details here . I informed the ~ 250 neighborhood association members of the existence of the blog entry and the survey, via our (City sponsored) listserv. The survey was available from 7PM on 2/4/07 till 1 PM on 2/7/07. I issued one reminder E-mail, and the survey was also mentioned on the Capitol Hill Seattle blog.

Results: I was most pleasantly surprised by the large response to the survey: 44 replies. I attach a copy of the survey summary. Individual responses are available: they're identified only by the IP address of the respondent. (A glance at the IP addresses didn't reveal any obvious "ballot box stuffing" ). I used the free trial of the survey software: if I pay their $19.95 monthly fee I can download the results, analyze them further and share them with you.

Note that the blog page prompted several very thoughtful responses from readers.

Conclusions: 79% self-identify as MPNA members (residents, property or business owners). We could tease out their responses if needed (see above).

Almost all support: the Comp Plan, density, Urban Villages, Green buildings and the high density corridor along Madison.

Most agree that 24th is great "family friendly" neighborhood with lots of long term residents. Most of the others have no opinion.

They are however, almost equally divided as to whether "The long-standing boundary between this high-density corridor and the surrounding residential zoning should be respected". They are also undecided as to whether there are sites for the project available within the Urban Village boundary: many don't know.

Most significantly, a large majority disagree with the statement " The proposed development at E. Thomas and 24th Ave. will degrade the long-term family oriented quality of the neighborhood" and a similar majority not believe that the zoning change should be denied.

In Summary: our neighborhood overwhelmingly supports urban density, but does not believe that the proposed development will degrade the character of the neighborhood, and does not support efforts to deny the proposed zoning change.

Comments: I reiterate the CHS viaduct survey report's caveat about selection bias.

Maarten's concern:

I might point out that the resolutions put forth by the Frasier Neighborhood Assoc are biased and designed to lead to their conclusion. Since survey uses their logic and phrasing, the results you get from the survey will be biased in the direction they seek.

seems to have been unwarranted. Alternatively, we could infer that it just strengthens the conclusion of the survey, as it produced the strong answer that it did, despite the "leading questions".

A Frazier Park neighbor speculated:

I might guess that most of the respondents have seen dramatic (and possibly negative) impacts of the rezoning in their neighborhood and could want to "spread the pain", or possibly, your own question - " So the question, in my mind, is whether we can afford to continue to protect single family housing against all intrusions?" - captures the feeling.

Thanks again for the speedy and thoughtful responses. Anything else you'd like to be surveyed about?

Great idea for Neighborhood Appreciation Day

(this great idea was submitted by good friend and blockwatch coordinator, Sonja Richter <Sonja.Richter@Seattle.Gov> )

The 13th Annual Neighborhood Appreciation Day is coming up soon, I think 2/10/07. I have long wanted to find a way to thank and recognize the unsung neighborhood helpers, namely the mailmen and women and the recycling and garbage pick up workers. As the City provides the greeting cards for Neighborhood Appreciation Day free of charge, why not encourage people in the community to give a card of appreciation to these people who quietly and anonymously carry out needed, no, essential, services in every neighborhood of Seattle?

The cards are available at the Neighborhood Community Centers. Nearest ones to us are the Central Area Center at 23rd & Jackson, and the Capitol Hill Center (upstairs in the Capitol Hill Library, center phone: 684-4574) Of course people could also just make their own note of appreciation if they prefer.

Sonja Richter

(City website, just updated for 2007, about the event is at:

http://tinyurl.com/3bfx8b )