Today’s Seattle Times included a special column on Renton’s downtown rejuvination, written by Kirkland free-lance writer Jackie Smith.
Click here to read it!
I thought it was cute that she started her tour at the Common Ground, which I had just recommended in the column I posted last night. (see below)
We finally had our professional council portrait taken, now that the council has been finalized. (Previous pictures I posted this year were taken by visitors to the council chambers)
These pictures were taken in a light rain, but you can hardly tell. And rainy day pictures always have the nicest lighting and nice color. (click pictures to enlarge)
Here’s mine.
One of my favorite new coffee shops is Common Ground Coffee and Cupcakes on Third Street. The cupcakes are a delicious alternative to the common donut, and the coffee and atmosphere are fantastic. Located right in the heart of our downtown, on Third and Wells, the Common Ground provides the perfect place for a quick walk break, a quiet chit-chat, or a cozy place to read a good book when visiting downtown.
They also have free Wi-Fi,real fruit smoothies, Italian soda, bubble tea, Frappes, creamy hot chocolate, and rocking horses for the kids.
A loyal patron poses in front of Audry Hepburn in Renton’s “Common Ground”
While other parts of our nation are mired in recession and experiencing plummeting house prices, the Northwest appears to be the one region that is holding up in this economy. Even more amazing Renton is holding up better than the rest of King County, with about twice the rate of new business, job growth, and housing starts than the rest of the region on average (this is without taking credit for growth from the new Benson Hill annexation). Renton may very well be experiencing some of the heathiest economic conditions of anywhere in the US right now!
Denis Law gave his first State of the City Address today, (79 days into his mayoral term), and shared some of the good news about the condition of our city finances overall, and the strength of our local economy.
Here are the highlights of his address:
Here is a story in today’s Seattle Times that deserves a rant. While the rest of the world is working to stomp out sex offenses, a sick woman in Woodenville decides to use the tough laws to wrongly persecute her professor…and she only gets eight days in jail for it.
In addition to this Woodinville woman trying to take this innocent man’s life away from him, she made it more difficult for real victims of sexual assault. If she had not been found out, through fingerprints and review of forged documents, he could have put him into prison for life, his family would have likely lost all their assets (in a protracted legal battle and civil suit), and his memory on this earth would have been spoiled.
I think it is wrong that she would only get 8 days in jail for this.
This was not one of those cases where she had false memories that she thought were true, or where they were in a he-said/she-said date-rape situation. This is a case where the accuser very deliberately set out to frame her college professor, by creating false documents and then concocting a false story that he came to her house and violently raped her.
In turn he was vilified by the public, dismissed from his job, labeled an imminent danger to the public, and thrown in jail on $500,000 bond. And he faced the prospect of lifetime incarceration for a crime that never happened. Even though he was ultimately completely exonerated, he faces the prospect of a permanent arrest record and charging record that will never go away, and a lifetime of nightmares about how close he came to losing everything because of one very sick woman.
She got off easy, because filing a false report is a misdemeanor.
I think deliberately and knowingly falsely accusing someone of a felony should in itself be a felony. And the punishment for the crime should be equivalent to the punishment for the crime alleged… in this case, up to life in prison.
If it sounds harsh, it should be. If she had bought a gun, and taken shots at him, it would have probably been less traumatic for for the professor. And if she killed him, his family would have probably had life insurance to secure their future….help that they would not get if he was wrongly jailed for life and branded a sex offender. Finally, her using a gun would not have hurt the true victims of sexual assault out there…victims and survivors who will now have a slightly harder time being believed thanks to this psychotic woman.
And one final comment. While it’s tragic that she was assaulted by her grandfather as a child (presuming we can trust that conviction), it’s no excuse for her to pick an innocent professor and target him for the worst society can pile on him. It sometimes seems almost every sex offender has a history of being a victim of abuse, but it does not cause us to therefore show mercy on them and limit their sentence to 8 days. It sounds to me like she should have still been seeing a counselor… perhaps if she was, then an innocent man, his family, his college, his students, and society could have been spared.
Meanwhile, our state legislature needs to find a way to throw-the-book at people who would intentionally pervert the laws that are intended to protect the most vulnerable among us.
There is so much information coming out about the tanker, and so many people have things to say about it, that Boeing has just hosted it’s own public blog on the topic. Please take a look, and post your comments.
Renton is home to Boeing Commercial Airplane Headquarters, giving our city an unusually high stake in this selection.
To: council@ci.renton.wa.us
Subject: Windsor Hills Neighborhood
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:08:07 -0700
My name is Jackie Lewis and my husband and I have lived at 408 Windsor Way N.E. for over 20 years. I moved back into that home that I was born in over 62 years ago after the death of my Father.
We are asking the City Council to place a moratorium on new home construction in the Windsor Hills neighborhood until the Planning Commission an address the issue of the R-8 zoning.
Our views are being impacted as well as the over all appearance of Windsor Hills. The “McMansions” seem very out of place and there seems to be more than one family living in them.
Please contact us if there are any issues that we can help address. Thank you for your time.
Brad and Jackie
Windsor Way N.E.
Renton, Washington 98056
What is the value of a tree. This brief article says up to $57,000! While I am not sure it was fair for them to compound their analysis ($57,000 is in future dollars), the concept seems sound that a tree can provide hundreds of dollars a year in benefits. The value of a tree
(I have scoured the internet for more scientific ways to assess the dollar value of trees, and there is really no easy way to do it. There are plenty of times when it has to be done, for insurance reasons after a fire or windstorm for instance, or when a government takes out private trees to build a road, but it is most often accomplished by appraisers who look at the value of a property with and without certain trees.)
My daughter reminds me that this Dr. Seuss movie made her cry when she first saw it.
This story helped teach kids about environmental stewardship. It’s a cute reminder of why we try to seek balance between development and environmental protection.
I’m in here on the right, at age 5, with my brother Roger (9), my sister Brenda (7), and my sister Sharon (3).
We’re standing in the not-yet-landscaped front yard of our brand-new split-level home in Livermore California. My parents had just purchased this home for $26,000 at the time this picture was taken in 1967. It just sold last year for about $600,000.
I think that to buy the house, they had saved money on our clothing 🙂
One of Livermore’s local newspaper photographers, Bill Owens, published a book with photos from my neighborhood during this time period. The book, called Suburbia, provided a critical but humerous view of Bay Area suburbs the way I remember them during my formative years.
Here is a link to a slideshow of these photos
and there is a great essay on this site
“In his renderings of neighborhoods without trees, wide thoroughfares without sidewalks and streets lined with identical houses, Owens’ photographs hint at things to come.” by Cynthia Morrill, Ph.D., from the Fall 2000 Foto/Text.
Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax died this week, at the age of 69. Here is an article in the New York Times about his significance in the world of fantasy gaming.
His original game company was acquired by Renton’s own local fantasy game company, Wizards of the Coast, in 1997. (Wizards has since been purchased by Hasbro, but continues to design fantasy role-play games from the Renton facility)
While I don’t partake in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D as it’s often known), my wife has been known to fight a monster or two. Here are some pictures of a local game.
Petsmart had a grand opening celebration yesterday, next door to Staples at the Landing. The store is beautifully stocked, well lit, offers many services, and is staffed by many friendly people. And you can take your animal friends with you while you shop for them.
They were giving early customers pet toys, t-shirts, and buttons. Look closely at the top-picture, and you can see the photo-button they gave my daughter that includes her and her puppy Max.
That’s my wife holding Max next to Petsmart’s mascot, a 9 foot tall hound dog. Max was a little nervous about being so small by comparison.
A cute little blog entry about our library Click here to see it
One of my informed readers just sent me this story about the United States considering purchasing an Air Force One replacement from Airbus.
Sitting next to me, my daughter exclaimed “Why don’t we just turn ourselves back over to the British? Let’s just tell them they won, and that we are incapable of taking care of ourselves. They can start governing us again.”
“Why don’t we just turn ourselves back over to the British?”
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