Olympia Time

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Worst metonymizer of Olympia digest

April 27, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Rich Roesler was top of the table, many points clear as they say in the soccer world in the race for worst metonymizer of Olympia. Even Rich’s blog name and url were metonymy. But, in the last few days, Steven Gardener of the Bremerton Sun’s Kitsap Caucus blog has grabbed the title.

1. Champion Gardener: “Last Minute Olympia Gamesmanship.” We got game, we are Olympia. And, you should see our manship too, its pretty good.

2. Again, champ Gardener: “Olympia’s Deadline Looms and We’re Here to Watch”. Damn right I have a deadline. You have until Monday morning, you all better be out of town or I’m calling your own towns and they’re going to have to drive down here to take you back.

3. And, last week weird progressive metonymy: Chad Shue with “Hello Olympia, it’s time for the tax talk.” Hi Chad, personally, I’m uncomfortable with that sort of conversation with you. Please, take it up with your King County state representative please.

I always knew the “Seattle chill” was bull shit

April 24, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Depending on how you want to view it, Eric at Sightline’s piece about the “Northwest Personality” will either reaffirm your belief in the Seattle Chill or convince you still it doesn’t exist.

From Eric:

Northwest states are among the most open and least neurotic places you can find, but we are also among the least extraverted. Not surprisingly, Oregon and Washington perform almost identically on every measure. More interesting, perhaps, is that Alaska, Idaho, and Montana are also very similar in some respects (though quite different in some others).

…

The good news is that the Northwest is not a neurotic place. Washington is the 46th least neurotic state in the union, followed by Alaska at 47th, and Oregon at 48th. (Idaho and Montana rank 32rd and 39th, respectively.) To get any less neurotic, you’d have to move to South Dakota (49th), Colorado (50th), or Utah (51st).

The other nice thing about the Northwest is our openness. Oregon is the 3rd most open state in the nation while Washington is 5th. (Only New York, Massachusetts, and DC are comparably open.) But move away from the urban Northwest and the openness appears to fall off: Montana is 16th; Idaho is 30th; and Alaska is 49th.

What do you call a region that is neither neurotic nor extroverted? Totally sane. Yeah, say you take a state that ranks both high in neuroticism and extroversion (like Pennsylvania) I guess you could say they weren’t as chill(y) as us. I’d also say they were also totally unhinged.

What outsiders say is our tendency to be on the surface nice but total dicks in action, I say we’re just not as freaking crazy as you are, so can you please get a grip of our sanity?

Also, another note that Eric makes is that as a region, the Northwest flows pretty well as a group through the personality traits, except for openness. As Oregon and Washington rank pretty high the more conservative northwest states are lower down (Montana 16th, Idaho 30th and Alaska 50th). Northwest conservative, in that regard, means you are less open.

High time for metonymy (can’t wait for Sunday baby)

April 24, 2009 / / 1 Comment

When the legislature folds up the tents on Sunday, I have hope my terror will end. But, as the engine of democracy begins its high pitch squeal towards sine die, the metonymy is getting way out of hand.

1. #olympia misuse on twitter continues.

2. From Seattle Courant: Olympia Says Seattle Property Owners Should Pay for Cost Overruns to Replace Viaduct. Boy, don’t you wish we could tell Seattle what to do.

3. Seattle PI gets it both wrong and right. You have to read the rss feed to find it but, it reads: “Legislative Democrats let Washingtonians down” and “Olympia’s disappointing Democrats: Minorities get rights, but state programs get the shaft.”

4. Washington Policy Blog (finally a conservative misuse): “For a while there Seattle Times’ top Olympia reporter Andrew Garber…” Boy, don’t I wish the Seattle Times actually had a “top” Olympia reporter. Or, if anyone else other than the Olympian covered Olympia. In my sense, not everyone elses.

5. Sightline Instutue (via Seattle dirt): “With Olympia locked in a power struggle over plans to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the 520 floating bridge…” If only. Man, what I would do with a floating bridge in Olympia.

Driving the local in civic dialogue

April 21, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Walter Neary, Lakewood’s blogging city councilman, conducted an experiment via twitter and facebook and got no comments from the locals:

The news was that the city of Lakewood’s collection of traffic fines is up 40 percent for the first three months of 2009 compared with the first three months of 2008, for total of about $200,000 more. I have to say, I didn’t get a lot of feedback, but what I got was very high quality.

…

I have to tell you … I was very impressed with the points of view.

BUT

and there’s a BUT

Not a single one of these folks lives in Lakewood.

So … great views. Great Internet exchanges. Zip interaction with Lakewood.

A simple solution could be to create a facebook account for “city councilman” Walter Neary and only accept relationships with your constituents. It could be made semi-public so anyone could see your information and what is going on on your wall, but only friends could comment. It would also be separate from a personal account, which would make it easy to divide from personal stuff.

Or, in the long term, I wonder if something like this would work:

I’ve been toying around with an idea in my mind, a sort of super public comment tool for state government on down. Each level of government in Washington at some point has a need for public comment. It would be interesting to create a system online where a citizen could create a user profile using their voter registration (or some stand in for folks who aren’t registered) and then see open public comment processes in the jurisdictions they reside in.

So, in my case, I’d see public comment for the city of Olympia, Thurston County, the local PUD and port and the state of Washington.

I’d be able to post comment to any of the open processes and either have it archived for whatever public official will review the comment or immediately accessible to other users so they could comment back on my comment.

Of course, normal rules like not being able to overuse the system (three comments a week, for example), not being rude and not using particular language, would apply.

For this system, the important thing would be to segregate people into public comment processes that they actually are involved in. So, keeping Kitsap residents from commeting on an interesting issue in Renton would be a priority.

Rediscovering Archie Binns

April 20, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Dan in Bremerton:

I was in 8th grade and was becoming interested in sailing. This book told a story of six teenagers from two families on a voyage around the San Juan Islands in a thirty two foot ketch. Even though the plot is a bit corny, the description of the islands, harbors and passages were very accurate. When the author “invented” a couple of islands, he let the reader know that he did that. While reading the book the first time, I would pull out my father’s charts to see where these places were. Reading that book probably was the one event that sparked my interest in cruising in the San Juan Islands and sailing to distant places. I started planning my own voyages to the San Juan Islands.

…

Even though “The Enchanted Islands” is considered a juvenile book, I reread it last week, but now, I can visually the descriptions of the places in the San Juans that the characters in the book visit and sail around. And his descriptions still seem accurate.

Shallow freedom blogging (stopping the next invisible city)

April 20, 2009 / / 0 Comments

The Trent at EFF makes the development moratoriums we’ve been going through around here sound like a local government government sitting on top of any sort of progress across the entire county.

Of course, the actual truth is a bit more complicated than that.

First, Trent ignores Thurston County v. WWGMHB, which casts a long shadow over development policy in Thurston County.

He also ignores the several times since 2005 that the county commission has released properties from the moratorium. This you could find out if you follow the link Trent offers:

October 17, 2005 – Board of County Commissioners released pockets of unincorporated land that are within the city limits of Olympia and Tumwater from the moratorium on subdivisions.

…

January 31, 2006 – The Board of County Commissioners extended the moratorium on residential subdivisions for 6 months. The following were released from the moratorium: 1) Subdivisions that do not create lots less than 20 acres in size; and 2) Divisions of land which do not create any additional building sites because two or more single- or multiple family homes (not mobile homes or family member units) are already located on the parcel, consistent with Section 18.04.052 of the Thurston County Code.

…

January 13, 2009 … The Board adopted Ordinance No. 14187 to renew the subdivision moratorium for another six months. This ordinance released a number of properties from the moratorium, and provided a method to be released from the moratorium if it can be demonstrated that the reason for the moratorium no longer exists. Please see the map under the section “Lands Subject to the Moratorium.

Trent also ignores the problem that is presented if you allow growth in the areas still included in the moratorium. Just like the properties above, the moratorium areas but up against a city in northern Thurston County, but are still in the county.

They represent baby “invisible cities,” urban and suburban “communities” like Tanglewild and Thompson Place that were allowed to grow and develop in a pre-GMA Washington. Thurston County’s own invisible city grew from the mid 50s until the early 80s and has filled in since then. Since growth management, it hasn’t been annexed into an existing city or become a city on its own. It remains an urban and suburban collection of neighborhoods that is governed by a rural form of government.

Because it demands a higher level of service than a real rural county, it is sucking the county government dry. Preventing the rise of more invisible cities is just good management.

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