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:

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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.

Here is the story

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.

Here is the blog

Renton is home to Boeing Commercial Airplane Headquarters, giving our city an unusually high stake in this selection.

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.)

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