History, politics, people of Oly WA

Month: October 2007 (Page 1 of 7)

Is King County going to fund a rebuild on the Sonics Arena (and build a stadium for a new MLS team?)

I came across this last night:

There have definitely been closed-door meetings involving Seattle city officials about a new basket ball arena in Seattle Center. The idea of also having Memorial Stadium (the ugly thing in the above picture), remodeled, renovated or rebuilt, is a possibility. A Seattle MLS team playing there is one option, and there’s been a rumor that Bob Whitsitt would be interested in putting a lacrosse team there as well.

But, no matter how many closed door sessions the city has, it can’t actually do what by law it is prevented to do: Seattle can’t spend money on Key Arena if it helps the Sonics.

But, King County can. And who recently presented a “vision for Seattle Center?” Ron Sims, the county executive. Yeah, it got the official cold shoulder from the city, but if there are closed door meetings, there might also be closed door reactions.

Sims even put the funding portion of his idea onto paper:

Sims floated legislation in Olympia that would have allowed the county to use hotel-motel and other taxes for a new Sonics arena, plus a redevelopment of Seattle Center and any other “civic amenities” deemed worthy by the county. The legislation would have raised $1 billion for those purposes over 25 years.

In terms of the popularity of sports team subsidies in King County vs. Seattle, remember that the Qwest Field initiative never would have passed without King County. It also might be easier to squeeze through a rebuild of Key Arena to a county-wide electorate if its wrapped around a broader revamping of Seattle Center.

T.J. Johnson’s old plan for a City of Olympia blog

I knew I remembered this from back in the day:

TJ Johnson, who will be sworn in tonight, said he compiled the list after hearing residents say they wanted a more receptive council.

“It’s the sense that we need to do a much better job of communicating and engaging the public,” Johnson said Monday. “That’s the spirit in which this is offered, to rebuild trust, to rebuild the partnership with citizens and the city.”

Johnson plans to discuss the proposal tonight and ask the council to set the wheels in motion.

All e-mail communication between council members should take place in a “chat room” accessible to the public via the Internet.

All written and electronic mail sent or received by council members in their capacity as council members (i.e., not personal e-mail) should be copied to a central repository operated by the office of the city manager.

That sounds a lot like a blog. I don’t really remember the details of what happened to T.J.’s plan, but you can assume he never got the blog going.

Council vows to consider efforts to draw in public
Olympia City Council told what to change

City council blogs in Monroe?

Chad Minnick is pushing for a city council blog to replace somewhat private city council email communication:

Establish a City Council blog as an alternative to emails. There really is no need for Council members to email privately. The only reason any Council member would use email at all is because we get together just one night a week and email is one of the quickest and easiest forms of communication the rest of the time. But only a small portion of what is discussed is confidential, and that is just matters having to do with personnel, litigation, and the purchase and sale property. There is no reason Council members can’t communicate during the week on a blog. Ideas can be discussed in the broad light of day where every citizen can read it. I have purchased the domain www.MonroeCityCouncil.com and will give ownership of it to the City for this use.

He has a few other suggestions that Olympia has already implemented (such as putting the meetings online), but the blog suggestion is interesting. Olympia will of course let you see each and every email council sends and recieves, you just have to drop down to the city hall each month to pick up a copy of a cd.

PDC issues new hands off rules regarding bloggers and campaign finance

For some reason, TVW didn’t cover the last Public Disclosure Commission meeting. So, I emailed over the PDC, wondering about last week’s meeting where they were supposed to cover their rules interpretation regarding bloggers and the internet.

Lori Anderson wrote back:

from Lori Anderson
to Emmett O’Connell
date Oct 30, 2007 11:13 AM
subject RE: draft Interpretation 07-04

They made one change and approved it. They removed the reference to Interpretation 07-03 in the header section. The interpretation will be on-line later today at (here).

We appreciate your interest.

Lori Anderson
Staff – WA State Public Disclosure Commission
PH (360) 664…

I was going to wait until they had posted their new interpretation, but the afternoon went without anything going up. I think its important to note not actually a rule or WAC, but rather how they see the rules).

Here is a pdf of the draft interpretation that Lori referred to in her email. Here is a great rundown of what that draft document is all about.

And some other links:
The PDC and bloggers
Panel Discussion of Issues Related to Internet Campaign Activity in Washington State
Blogs about politics on radar of state elections officials
State Regulation of Palousitics?
PDC talks about regulating internet activity
PDC contemplating Internet regulations

I’ll post up the new interpretation when it goes online.

Wished I’ve voted againt Bill McGregor for Olympia Port Commission

I voted for him because I couldn’t think of one thing he’d done wrong in his short time on the commission and because I didn’t want to vote for serial candidate Bill Pilkey without a good reason. After seeing this video, I would have voted against him.

I don’t necessarily agree with the activists that wanted to show the video during a port commission meeting, but the over the top hand wringing by Van Schoorl and McGregor was too much.

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