Sadly, a 40-year-old woman was found deceased in a travel lane on Maple Valley Highway in Renton last night. Police investigators would greatly benefit from any witnesses that may have seen her or anything unusual around 10:00-10:20 PM. Here is the official police request:
A few weeks ago the State Senate passed a bill that city officials and law enforcement officers hoped would give them a little more authority in getting people struggling with substance abuse into treatment programs. Now, the State House is watering down the bill, and threatening to undo the gains from this session. I gave background on the “Blake” decision that precipitated this legislation in a previous blog entry here.
Mayors of 28 cities have just signed a joint letter on the topic, and the mayors of Renton, Kent and Auburn have signed on. I suspect many other mayors would have signed if the timing had allowed for it. The debate is wrapping up now so the letter’s release was highly time sensitive.
Five and a half months ago three of Renton’s councilmembers signaled they are not in step with Renton’s Mayor Pavone on this topic. Renton Councilmembers Ed Prince, Ryan McIrvin and Carmen Rivera signed a letter with ten other neighboring local officials pushing in a different direction. Mayor Pavone supports legislation making the use of fentanyl and other potentially deadly opioids a gross misdemeanor, with an opportunity to avoid criminal charges if a user attends rehab; the three council members have apparently called for complete decriminalization. The Council Members’ letter said in part “Criminalizing low level, non-violent offenses steals our opportunity to divert youth and guide them toward a better track. ” I don’t want to accidentally misrepresent their opinions, so I’ll let readers interpret for themselves. The Council Members’ full letter from November 2022 can be found here. (I also added the full letter to the comments for convenience)
Here is today’s letter from the 28 Mayors:
The legislature has slightly improved their poorly-conceived 2021 police vehicle pursuit law with passage of Senate Bill 5352. I’m grateful to the state senators and representatives that pushed for these improvements, and have made it a little better. Many of these legislators tried to do more, but this was the best they could get, and I thank them. The improvements make it easier to catch dangerous suspects that have committed violent crimes and are seen fleeing in vehicles.
But the 2023 improvement do not reverse the deadly consequences of letting reckless and drunken drivers overrun our highways with impunity. The 2021 law made it illegal for police to pursue drivers who exhibit dangerous driving behavior, and the 2023 revisions did nothing to fix that. The data suggests that Washington highway death tolls will continue to march upward at 10-15% per year as a result, making a continued mockery of the state’s “Target Zero” driver safety program.
Reckless drivers get too much of a pass. In fact, unless a driver is known to be a suspect in a serious violent crime, the law explicitly tells the officer NOT to pursue if ” the operator of the moving vehicle appears to be willfully resisting or ignoring the officer’s attempt to stop the vehicle by increasing vehicle speed, making evasive maneuvers, or operating the vehicle in a reckless manner that endangers the safety of the community or the officer.”
In other words, if you drive recklessly enough, you can’t be forced to pull over. And if you’re in a stolen car and you hide your face, your risk of ever getting caught is near zero…at least unless your reckless driving leads to a crash.
Despite what some legislators may tell you, DUI’s are also unenforceable against the most rebellious drivers even with the updates to the law. Unless a driver willingly pulls over for an infraction, the police can’t typically establish reasonable suspicion for a DUI— it takes a driver interview.
And under the bill, in order for police to pull over someone who is “a serious risk of harm,” they must also be wanted for one of the crimes listed in the bill– it’s not enough that their driving itself is a serious risk of harm. The legislature shows little concern for the rapidly increasing number of devastating car crashes that take hundreds of lives per year in our state, the biggest cause of death for children and young adults.
The legislature has effectively created a new class of drivers, exempt from all the rules. Most of us toil to earn money for a car, and pay for expensive licensing, insurance, tolls, and maintenance in order to drive. But for those that don’t mind breaking laws and driving dangerously, the legislature has created an alluring and widely-known loophole that allows drivers to avoid these costs and still not get pursued by police. If one steals a car, removes the license plate, and commits to always driving recklessly and endangering the public when they’re on the road, they are essentially exempted from being pursued by police. It has become so tempting, even local high-school students on TikTok are doing it, sometimes several cars in one night. This increasingly popular Washington State loophole comes with the added benefit to criminals of being able to commit property crimes and drive away with impunity. Most of us have seen these drivers on the roads and highways, often passing us or running stops signs, and typically bearing no license plates. I’ve personally had near-misses with at least two of them.
Even the perpetrators are hurt by this. One of the worst consequences of the police pursuit law is that by enabling/incentivising car theft and reckless driving, it entices more young people who love cars into a life of crime and perpetual danger. I went to high school with some car enthusiasts who loved to modify and occasionally race their vehicles. Fortunately, they knew they would be pursued by police if they raced on streets, so they found off-road, out-of-the-way locations to race, and kept their in-town driving legal. They also didn’t steal cars, as no one wanted to be busted for that. These classmates have enjoyed fulfilling lives pursuing their car hobbies– thanks in part to the sensible lawmakers back then that did not carelessly incentivise deadly and illegal activities.
Like many in our state, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile policies I’ve always supported regarding environmental stewardship and clean air and water, with the new trend of enabling offenders of environmental and other crimes. Our most sensitive wetlands and ecosystems are increasingly polluted and ruined without consequences. With King County Transfer Stations now charging $181 per ton to dump garbage with a $30 minimum just to empty a waste basket, and seemingly no consequence for littering any more, it’s not just the struggling unhoused putting garbage and pollutants in our environment.
One can not advocate for anarchy and still claim to be protecting the environment. All the laws protecting air, water, soil, plants and wildlife are meaningless without adequate police staffing and tools to enforce them and meaningful accountability for violators.
And it’s incongruent for anyone to claim to be a “climate activist” while enabling home break-ins, car thefts, and vandalism. All of these crimes have enormous environmental consequences, adding significantly to carbon in the atmosphere, as essential property is replaced and new protective measures are taken by property owners.
In 2022 my catalytic converter was stolen off my van in my driveway, along with thousands of other catalytic converters stolen from Washington automobiles that year. State legislators had crafted a law, still in place, that ensures anyone stealing catalytic converters won’t be pursued by police if they drive away. Our state is now the worst for thefts of catalytic converters, leading to tons of extra mining of rare earth minerals and an unknown number of vehicles driving around without the proper pollution control equipment. We’re all breathing more unburned hydrocarbon, nitrous oxide, and carbon monoxide because of this legislation.
In 2021 the city of Seattle considered implementing a crime-of-need defense, that would have made it okay for people to steal from a neighbor if they needed money for rent, perhaps taking a contractor’s tools and pawning them for cash. Fortunately this law did not pass, but the flawed reasoning that brought it to the table is still held by many local lawmakers including some in Olympia. The obvious way for a compassionate society to help someone trying to cover their rent when they can’t afford it is to extend assistance in the form of a voucher. If someone can’t afford food, we should give them access to a food bank. Enabling them to steal from a neighbor diminishes their self-esteem, gets them about three cents on the dollar for everything stolen, and puts the theft victim also at risk of needing rental assistance. Furthermore on a large scale it is environmentally disastrous, as the replacement of essential tools and repair of property has enormous costs.
Washington has by far the highest rate of stolen cars in the US, with an overall number of thefts that only trails California and Texas because those states are many times our size. Renton is seeing up to five auto thefts per day. The theft of a single car puts 4.2 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere, so Renton car thefts are currently contributing 21 METRIC TONS per day of carbon to the climate change balance sheet. Anyone who is okay with this, who enables this by promoting lax law enforcement, is NOT an environmental activist.
The average home break-in dumps about the same amount of carbon into the atmosphere as driving a car 3000 miles after you figure in the replacement of property, the repair work, and criminal justice implications. A European study published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology estimates the carbon footprint of this and other crimes in one of the few studies on this topic. While some of the carbon footprint is produced by the criminal justice system itself, most of the criminal justice carbon footprint impacts come from cases of homicide, assault, sex offenses, and robbery; these crimes must be punished meaningfully to prevent vigilante justice (more crimes) and mayhem in society.
In summary, if one cares about the protecting the environment and preventing climate change, they should care about law enforcement– because you can’t accomplish one without the other.
There was a fire a few days ago that burned a sensitive environmental area in the valley in Renton. The fire appears to be human caused. Thankfully our outstanding Renton Fire Authority limited the damage, or it could have been much worse.
From 2003 to 2009 the Renton City Council and Mayor’s office worked closely with the State Department of Ecology, WSDOT, and other agencies to create a natural wetland habitat to help protect displaced and threatened migratory birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals in the Renton/Kent Valley. As an engineer and environmentalist, I took great interest in this project, and I participated in many of the meetings prior to construction. The area was to be terraformed and landscaped with only native plants, and complex irrigation systems were installed throughout the planting area to ensure they became well established. Washington Department of Ecology features the successful project on their website here.
To help the public learn about the delicate ecosystem, a boardwalk was constructed of Trex material that bisected the project, and pedestrians could walk across the native habitat as long as they stayed on the walkway so they would not harm the sensitive nature below.
We dedicated the Springbrook Creek Wetland Mitigation Bank as a new park in May 2009, after millions of dollars were invested and countless hours of paid and volunteer labor were completed. The new park was called a “Mitigation Bank” because the 129 acres of land and the improvements were funded by builders and developers who wanted to fill in smaller sections of wetland in the valley. They could do so if they contributed an equivalent amount of land into the “wetland bank,” replacing their wetland with the new protected, cultivated, larger one on Springbrook Creek. The State Department of Transportation became a major contributor and partner as they needed to fill wetlands when they were widening I-167.
Renton children helped complete the planting. These pictures are from WSDOT and can be found along with many more here.
Erasmus the rooftop dragon was unveiled four years ago on April 13, and Renton celebrated his fourth birthday yesterday morning with a Dragon Dash fun run and party. City of Renton Recreation Division and volunteers did a wonderful job organizing the festive event.
If you haven’t heard the story of Erasmus’s creation, it’s covered well in this article.
There were both 5K and 10K runners in yesterday’s birthday run, and the whole event was great fun. The cool morning weather was perfect for the almost 300 runners and walkers that had signed up. Dragon theming was abundant, and the organizers kept the event running smoothly. Participants were given Dragon Dash shirts and snacks at the end of the race, along with a chance to try to pull a sword from a stone and be photographed with dragons, while the children hunted for dragon eggs.
My wife Cathy and I had a delightful time participating. With wonderful people, lovely nature on the Cedar River trail, exercise, and dragon theming all right here in our own downtown…who could ask for more?
The Firefighters at Fire Station 12 in Renton Highlands helped socialize puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind this afternoon.
Puppies that are in training to be guide dogs need exposure to many different situations to prepare for being guides. There’s no telling what circumstances they may find themselves in during their career. As puppies they’ll often visit airports, theaters, busses, museums, restaurants, shops and other facilities that they may travel to with their partner after they finished training and get assigned.
Renton Fire Authority welcomed them into Fire Station 12 on Saturday, and helped condition them to the sights and sounds that they may see in an emergency. They climbed aboard an aid car, watched a fire truck drive past them, saw flashing lights, and met a firefighter in full bunker gear including breathing apparatus.
The training was outstanding for the puppies and fun for all participants. Thanks to Renton Fire Authority for opening the station to the valuable training, and for the warm welcome and assistance they gave to the puppy raisers.
Renton Police have released their March crime report, and auto thefts have jumped to a staggering new high. 147 cars were stolen in March in Renton, about five per day. Each one is another sad story that brings misery and often financial hardship to it’s heartbroken owner. People are having a hard time getting wrecked cars repaired with auto shops all working at max capacity and parts on backorder. Motorists are even having difficulties getting rental cars right now, and the extra demand from car theft victims is a factor.
Renton Police and most Renton elected officials have been asking the state to restore some authority for pursuing car thieves. The state legislature appears to be moving forward with a small improvement to the police pursuit law, but the revisions will still not allow police to pursue stolen vehicles unless the police have evidence of certain violent crimes related to the car’s occupants. Stolen vehicles continue to be a primary tool for conducting property crime since they can’t be chased, making them just the ticket for any thief to make a clean getaway.
The report shows other types of theft dropping, but unfortunately much of this is likely a result of people giving up on reporting. For instance, the vast majority of shoplifting cases are now going unreported. Shoplifting used to account for a large percentage of theft cases. Car thefts reports are among the most reliable. When a car gets stolen, the owner needs a police report to collect insurance and clear themselves of liability, so car thefts get reported. But when a lawnmower, power saw, or kids bicycle gets stolen, and they cost less than the deductible on an insurance policy, many increasingly-disheartened residents think reporting the loss is no longer worth their time.
I’ve written several posts in the past about the May Creek Basin Plan, and Renton’s work in this beautiful watershed to improve our parks and trails while reducing flood risks. On Monday night the Renton City Council will have an opportunity to add another puzzle-piece to the accumulated park land. The 2718 Duvall Acquisition would add another 1.7 acres to Renton’s portfolio. The action is shown as item 6(d) on this council agenda.
Eventually this park land should become more accessible to the public with future trail systems and other amenities. Renton and Newcastle both have trail systems reaching into this area, and both would benefit by further expansion and connection with one-another. Newcastle currently has a unified trail network in May Creek Basin that includes a trail paralleling May Creek along it’s north side. Renton has long-term plans to complete a south-side May Creek Trail, and for many years has been making the property acquisitions necessary to do so.
Renton’s full trail map is here
Newcastle’s full trail map is here
Two months ago I wrote about an exuberant discussion with Michael Christ, the visionary developer of Renton’s Southport, as Renton was finally going to extend Park Avenue from the Landing to his office towers. This project took longer than it should have because of complex railroad negotiations and other issues. The delay in extending Park Avenue slowed the leasing of Southport’s beautiful Class A office towers. The pandemic and work-from-home trend added further delays. Mr. Christ and I reminisced about how his project had sprung from planning work Renton started in the 1990s, in my early days on Renton Council, when our legendary Economic Development Director Sue Carlson set about diversifying our economic base for the future. Mr. Christ had embraced Ms. Carlson’s ideas and ran with them, and his results three decades later are stunning. My February 9 blog entry includes much more detail, and I hope you’ll find time to take a look at it here.
Upon news that lenders are pressing him to sell some of the property, I phoned him yesterday to remind him how much his visionary work meant to the City during my 28 years on Renton City Council, and to me as a resident of Renton enjoying his facilities. His hotel (that he personally helped design) is the first choice for many of my visiting friends and relatives, and his Dock and Brew, with it’s live music and summertime lakeside sunsets, is unmatched anywhere in the area. Southport hosts numerous weddings (sometimes several at a time), conventions, and other wonderful events, and his restaurants are among Renton’s finest. My sons hope to eventually work out of his inviting offices, and not have to commute to Seattle. He’s made an incredible, indelible mark on our city. Bringing Wizards of the Coast to the office complex was a perfect fit.
Negotiations are in the hands of lawyers so Mr. Christ and I didn’t discuss those details. But I valued the opportunity to remind him how so many of us in Renton appreciate him. My personal hope is that the lenders and any additional stakeholders will be smart enough to realize that no one–absolutely no one– could do a better job managing or growing Southport than Mr. Christ. He is the person that could best market the office space, and he’s the one who knows what Renton residents will seek in future amenities. His vision was perfect, but the unforeseeable timing issues were cruel. Mr. Christ and his wife have been the talent that has made Southport possible, and I hope they maintain a lead role in its future.
Video: This security camera video taken from Renton’s West Hill (looking across town toward I-405 and Renton Highlands) shows two cycles of bright flashes as the power goes out for 6,045 customers on April 9, 2023. While the video is low resolution, the lights can be seen turning on and off in the background (east of I-405), as automatic switching or resetting circuit breaker systems attempt to keep the lights on. (Thanks to Jay Levias Sr. for this video)
I’m curious whether aging equipment, an overtaxed power grid, an external event, or just bad luck caused last night’s weird power outage. I’ll try to learn more and share it here if I can. If any readers know more about this, please add your information in the comments.
Here’s some of what I know so far:
Around 9:10 last night, bright flashes light up the night sky near I-405 and the Landing, as over 6,045 PSE customers in Renton and Newcastle witnessed their power shutting off, turning back on, then shutting off again, then on again, and then back off. As one of those customers, my home’s appliances chimed and complained as the surges and low voltages impacted devices from my washing machine to my computers in various ways. In the 38 years in my home, this was the strangest outage I had ever seen, partly due to the rave put on by the auto-switching stations trying to keep the lights on, partly because of the brilliant flashes many saw in the sky, and partly because there was nothing about the weather that would make an outage seem likely– it was a typical Seattle drizzly evening, with no significant wind or lightning. The outage had my family dashing through the house unplugging electronics that could be hurt by high power surges.
To the credit of the hard workers at PSE, the power was restored within the hour.
In my previous entry I discussed an incident in which a Council Member emailed the Police Chief at 1:00 AM instead of phoning 911, and then publicly complained about the Chief’s half-day response time, wrongly implying the lack of immediate response to the email was somehow intentional and that it put people in danger. (Any danger was actually due to not phoning 911.) This blog describes a council policy that was violated by this Council Member’s action. Running a city is serious business, with 110,000 Renton lives in the hands of the elected leaders and the people working for them. City employees including Council Members need to make an effort to follow the policies that are put in place to guide them.
Note: 4/7 Update at bottom of page
Council Member Carmen Rivera emailed Renton Police Chief Jon Schuldt’s office at 1:00 AM last Thursday morning, and then complained on Twitter that she didn’t get an immediate response. Of course Renton’s 911 system would have delivered a fast response, but apparently that’s not good enough for her.
Since this all played out on Twitter, the council has already received at least one email questioning why a council member would expect to get special, privileged treatment from the chief that other residents don’t get.
That resident is correct to question this. Council members shouldn’t expect special treatment. They are public servants, not royalty, and the systems they put in place for protection of Renton residents, like 911 dispatch, should be good enough for them. If they aren’t, they should fix them. In 28 years as council member I never asked the police chief for protection, but I called 911 a few times.
Every week or so I see a facebook post in which a hapless homeowner is trying to figure out how they can receive their mail after their neighborhood’s “cluster” mailbox has been pried open by thieves. Often they are being told by the US Postal Service that it is up to their neighborhood to repair or replace the mailbox cluster, even if there is no homeowner’s association, and no individual even has data on who is getting mail there.
The post office has all the information and resources needed to do it themselves of course, but they are looking for ways to shift the burden under this policy on mailboxes which increasingly declares these cluster mailboxes “privately owned”. This makes some sense for an apartment complex or a subdivision where the box maintenance was formally transferred to a home owners’ association. But in an older neighborhood where no one was ever in charge and homes were originally built with mail slots or porch-mounted boxes, the post office apparently created no plan for this repair or replacement. It takes a resident willing to sleuth out who receives their mail there, find contact information for everyone affected, confer with the postal service, hire a contractor, ensure proper permits are in place, pay for the equipment and the installation in advance, collect funds for reimbursement, and somehow get keys to everyone impacted and to the post office. If one of the neighbors is a retired contractor, engineer or architect, with good cash reserves, good people skills and no language barriers, they can get this job done in a few months. If instead the neighborhood is comprised of people with full-time jobs, without extra cash or time on their hands, it can be hard to get this task done.
Most neighborhoods can eventually find someone to step up to this role once, but now some mailboxes are being broken into repeatedly, and neighbors are growing weary of fixing them. As US mail has become less relevant, with far more bulk-advertisements than personal content, some neighborhoods are taking longer to find someone willing to step up even if they have the time, skills, and money to do so.
Some local social media users have vented frustration that the Federal Government sets tampering with the mail as a felony, yet seemingly does very little locally to investigate these crimes or help the crime victims. From their perspective, the post office moved the mailbox off their porch, put it where it can’t be surveilled from their home, aren’t protecting it, and they’re now telling homeowners it’s the homeowener’s job to find out who else uses it and pay to fix it.
I’ve heard some neighborhoods have been successful at getting the post office to fix these boxes, while others have had to do it themselves. I personally have not found a specific federal policy that helps sort this out, and I suspect individual post office managers may be making judgement calls on who gets helped. (If someone has more information on this please leave it in the comments).
My view is that the post office should uniformly take responsibility for the boxes that they installed, or get used to the idea that an increasing number of homeowners will simply give up on receiving regular US Mail deliveries. That will be the next step toward the end for the US postal service as we’ve known it for centuries– a sad day indeed.
I’ve not previously seen this story covered by a local news outlet, but a Houston, Texas news source covered it here. Apparently it’s the same across the US. I agree with Houston author Amy Davis, especially where she says, “it’s a real cluster.”
Along with our state, the majority of US states allow medical cannabis sales, and a growing number also allow recreational sales. But the US banking systems and credit card companies will not support these businesses, as cannabis sales still conflict with federal laws. On 4/20 a year ago, US Senator Patty Murray responded to a season of particularly deadly cannabis retail store crimes in our area by emailing the Associated Press “It makes absolutely no sense that legal businesses are being forced to operate entirely in cash, and it’s dangerous — and sometimes even fatal — for employees behind the register.” Polls show that a clear majority of voters and lawmakers support allowing marijuana businesses to engage in commercial banking.
The US House of Representatives has approved bills over a half a dozen times allowing banks to do business with pot shops, but it has stalled in the US senate. Patty Murray tried to help push a senate bill through last year that had support of a majority of senators including at least 9 republicans, but it got blocked at different times by BOTH democrat and republican senate leaders.
