March 2008

I recently wrote about how I got sandbagged into a million dollar bet with Elsbeth on whether the garbage man was due to pick up the big blue recycle bin, and lost.

The Legislature has made the right first step, but there is much to do to come up with a coherant housing policy in the city.

Lawmakers in Olympia passed a measure that strengthens protections for tenants displaced in the overpowering rush to turn usually older apartment buildings into cash machines for their owners. Hundreds of rental spaces have been lost to conversions into condominiums.

As we bring the West Seattle and Fauntleroy YMCA's Partners With Youth Campaign to a close, I am amazed at how much people can do for their community.

For those of you who do not know about Partners With Youth, let me quickly bring you up to speed.

Every year during the month of February, the Greater Seattle YMCAs hold their only fundraising event, bringing in donations to keep YMCA programs accessible to everyone in the community.

The money goes to a variety of uses so let me share some of those with you.

Partners With Youth programs include, but ar

It has been obvious over the past years that the amount of coverage given to our local high schools sports teams has not just declined, but become non-existent. I was disappointed to see the March 5, 2008 paper and no mention of the West Seattle High School Boys Basketball team participating in the 3A State Tournament or that both Girls and Boys teams from Seattle Lutheran High School had played in the State B Tournament in Spokane.

The Herald used to be the place to read about how our local high school sports teams were doing.

I would like to extend my heartfelt appreciation to the community of West Seattle, and in particular to the wonderful clients of West Seattle Veterinary Hospital. For the past eight years, I have had the privilege of caring for many of your canine and feline family members. In the process I have met some truly remarkable people and pets, and formed some friendships that I know will survive for many years to come. The support I have felt from the community and from the clientele here has been tremendous.

I was very saddened to see that Tim St. Clair has passed on. Over the years, we discussed a number of stories involving my department's work, and Tim always approached the issues with an open mind and a strong sense of fairness for all parties. He also had a great sense of humor. I'll miss working with him.

Alan Justad

Department of Planning

and Development

City of Seattle

Thank you for providing a great resource for those of us who love West Seattle!

Thank you, too, for the gift of Tim St. Clair, whose prolific dispatches I will sorely miss. There wasn't an issue where I didn't read through the paper and marvel at his ability to produce the quantity and quality of stories he produced every week. I'd always wonder how the heck he could do that so consistently. Truly a rare breed. The Saint indeed. May your newsroom be always buoyed by his intrepid spirit.

Susan Kelleher

Five-hundred thirty apartments starting at $900 a month for a studio are considered "affordable?" "Not everyone owns a car?" "Compliment without cannibalizing?"

All over West Seattle, one and two story buildings are being replaced by four to six stories. One thousand square feet of living space are replaced by 6,000 (as happened on my block of 50th Avenue Southwest). These enormous projects are robbing West Seattle of the human scale that made it special, friendly and comfortable.

The term "urban village" is a very sad one to me anymore. I live next to a project of building 30 three-story near-mansions, as I call them, supposedly townhouses to be sold for over $300,000 apiece. They're on Southwest Holden Street near the intersection with Delridge Way Southwest.

Before this project started, there were woods there, with plenty of diverse wildlife, including a screech owl I'd seen. A short time after it began, the wildlife and woods were gone, as well as much of the sloping land. I'd walked through that dense woods one summer, and the ground was unstable.

A Seattle P-I article dated Feb. 13, stated the Memorial Stadium is in the way of the Seattle Center redesign; so let's hear the rest of the story.

The problem is very clear, as the stadium should not have been part of the Century 21 planning to begin with. The Century 21 plan regarding the War Memorial was faulted right from the start. A better plan would be to retain the stadium and implement the other design features.