July 2005

I go to the show to see the display gardens, and I usually buy a preview party ticket so that I get to see and photograph the gardens sans crowds. I also usually work at the show, so I get to see the display gardeners several times. Since I did a show garden myself last year, I am a tiny bit less critical that I used to be. It is a ton of work to create a show garden, but now that I have walked the said mile, I feel a bit more entitled to my constructive criticism.

As usual, I liked bits and pieces of many gardens.

The comings and goings of garbage trucks at the city's proposed intermodal solid-waste transfer facility being considered for Harbor Island wouldn't much affect other traffic, according to a transportation consultant.

Garbage trucks from throughout the city would haul their loads to the planned facility, where the refuse would be compacted and placed inside sealed containers for shipment by train to a landfill in eastern Oregon.

Planners from Seattle Public Utilities and their private consultants presented the results of their draft supplemental environmental impact statement to the public at West Seattle High School last week. In addition to transportation impacts, planners also studied how much odor and noise such a facility would create. Its effects on water quality, plants and animals were studied too.

Engineering consultants Heffron Transportation studied traffic patterns around all four sites being considered by Seattle Public Utilities for the future garbage-handling facility. Two sites being studied are in the area around the former Fisher flour mill.

The Monorail Project Board has set a deadline of April 6 for Executive Director Joel Horn to have a date for the completion of talks over details of a contract to design, build, operate and maintain the monorail.

Discussions have been going on for close to six months between the Seattle Monorail Project and Cascadia Monorail Co.

"Negotiations are taking so long because I'm trying to get everything," Horn said in an interview Thursday. "We don't want to give on station design. We don't want to give on anything.

I go to the show to see the display gardens, and I usually buy a preview party ticket so that I get to see and photograph the gardens sans crowds. I also usually work at the show, so I get to see the display gardeners several times. Since I did a show garden myself last year, I am a tiny bit less critical that I used to be. It is a ton of work to create a show garden, but now that I have walked the said mile, I feel a bit more entitled to my constructive criticism.

As usual, I liked bits and pieces of many gardens.

Around 3 a.m. Monday, in the 3700 block of Beach Drive, a resident noticed a vehicle idling in the alley and a woman "meandering" in the area. As he watched, she picked up two potted plants belonging to a residence and put them in her car. He yelled, "What are you doing?" In a crude manner, she said she was looking for a place to relieve herself of excess bodily fluid.

My first job at Boeing was as a hole driller on the B-17 bomber in 1940.

I had to drill the holes in the skin of the plane so a guy with a rivet gun could stand on a platform and put rivets in the holes. Then he took a compressed air rivet gun and another guy with a heavy steel bar of steel standing inside the airplane held it up against the tail of the rivet and the gun went rat-a-tat-tat.

I was down below the rivet bucker one day when he dropped the heavy bar and it smacked me in the head.

The monorail cost being forecast is not just construction plus interest but rather also includes the operation costs for many years. I believe it is 40 years. Report the facts.

West Seattle would be the beneficiary of such a transportation project. Where is our light rail that we pay for? The monorail is West Seattle's light rail. Your headline read "Monorail's rough night." Fact is that support outweighed opposition 2-to-1. What the heck did your headline mean? Was that your personal opinion?

I am a senior at the University of Washington in architecture and urban planning and intern with the city of Seattle.

I wanted to take a moment to write a rebuttal about your article ("McFarland presses his Viaduct fix plan," June 15).

What I want to say is I am happy that you incorporated the environment and economical impacts of these two projects, but I found that you focused everything around the car. Keeping the viaduct a bridge for people to enjoy the view, from a car.

We are unhappy to see the first commanding officer of the Southwest police precinct move to the department's largest precinct located in downtown. Capt. Jim Pryor ran a tight ship and led a top-flight unit that kept crime under control. But his replacement has a great record and we are sure he will carry on the tradition.

Some of the residents of various neighborhoods will argue with our view that crime is under control. Alki residents have been steamed at the influx of summer visitors, now more able to drink to excess at the new liquor establishments along the beach.