Erasmus the dragon appears to be watching runners queue at the starting line for a fun run that commemorates his fourth birthday
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?
Renton Firefighter Ryan Northrup gets some puppy kisses in payment for teaching Guide Dog puppies not to be afraid of bunker gear.
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.
A scene playing out many times per day: a stolen Hyundai is recovered in Renton Highlands with body damage, wrecked ignition, broken glass and crime-related tools and debris inside.
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.
A police forensic specialist dusts for prints and gathers other evidence from a stolen car, but the odds are low that the thief will be found after the car has been abandoned.
Renton’s May Creek watershed offers gorgeous scenery without leaving town. Here my daughter Katie Jones rides Zeus across tributary Honey Creek, about 1/4 mile from the confluence of May Creek and Honey Creek.
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 trail map, with trails designated by purple lines. The horse picture above was taken right where it says “Honey Creek Greenway” on the map.
Council is expected to forward this agenda bill to Finance Committee at Monday’s meeting. Finance Committee will then review it, and make a recommendation back to full council. It’s a sensible and strategic acquisition under current policy, so unless there is an unexpected surprise, it will most likely be approved.
Southport’s office plaza, complete with dragon to welcome Wizards of the Coast
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.
Former Renton Council Member Marcie Palmer with Southport’s Michael Christ in one of Southport’s office towers, at the 2019 Chamber of Commerce Holiday Gala. (Photo credit Marcie/Gary Palmer)
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.
Council Policy 800-09 was written and adopted by Council
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.
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.
Over the past few decades the US Postal Service stopped front-porch letter delivery to Renton’s older homes, and installed these cluster mailboxes instead. As crime surges and mailboxes are repeatedly broken into, the US postal service is backing away from responsibility for maintaining them.
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.”
Jordan Brown, a beloved gifted artist, worked at a Tacoma cannabis dispensary, and was tragically killed a year ago in a robbery. Cannabis store robberies have become increasingly frequent due in large part to the large amount of cash on hand. These stores are not allowed to engage in traditional banking and credit card transactions. Photo: KOMO News
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.
