February 2009

Seattle Public Utilities has announced new trash collection days for residents beginning March 30.

Between March 1 through 7, homeowners will be mailed a "Collection Guide" that outlines the new citywide pick-up days and service changes, said Andrea D. Wedderburn.

The program aims to convert 60 percent of Seattle’s generated waste to recycling or composting by 2012.

Some changes for recycling include:

Food and yard waste will now be collected every week. (Currently, food and yard waste is collected every other week.)

All leftover food, including meat, fish and dairy, can go into the recycling and yard waste carts.

No more recycling containers just for glass. Glass now goes into the same container as the rest of recycling.

Used motor oil will be picked up curbside for no cost. (Restrictions apply.)
 

• All food scraps, including meat, fish, bones, shells and dairy products, can go in the food and yard waste cart.
• More food/yard waste cart sizes to choose from, including 13-, 32- and 96-gallon options.
• Weekly food and yard waste collection for all single-family households. Organics were previously collected every other week.

Dear Editor,

When you write about “Death with Dignity” could you not use the word “dignified"? Each human life is the greatest awe that we know about in the universe. We want the right to end this life early. We want the right to call this dignified. I don’t think so.

Tim Carney
Ballard

Dear Editor,

Metro’s RapidRide bus “improvements” have been presented with pretty pictures of bus zones with pretty busses.

They don’t say that a lane of either 15th N.W. or 24th N.W. will be reserved for busses only - but that’s what “picking up people without pulling out of the traffic lane” decodes to. You can see those loading bulbs over on 15th N.E. between N.W. 50th and Campus Parkway.
This won’t help car drivers.

On the other hand, taking out half the stops on 24th N.W. won’t help riders - the time saved, unless you are at N.W. 85th or just south of there, isn’t going to be much more than the extra time to walk to be bus zone. And not everyone lives next door to the bus zone, and this is an extra 2- or 3-block walk both going and coming.

(The route planner was pleased to say that many of the stops have already been removed on 15th NW, and “there wasn’t too much protest” - Ballard, unlike Magnolia or Laurelhurst, usually doesn’t organize protests very well.)

About all these dogs and puppies taken from these three ladies, each in a different house, mother and two daughters running puppy mills. The houses should be sold and all assets seized and given to the animal shelters caring for these animals.

These ladies have been selling these puppies for $700 and $1200 each, the ads have been placed in the papers we read. The lady that turned them in said this is so. It was on the news. They said animal control reported all the females were having puppies or were going to. Some were so bad standing in their own feces, they were sick and full of fleas, rotting skin. These had to be put to sleep.

Now that they have proof they should be able to prosecute and jail these ladies. No more slapping hands. And I also wrote to Gov. Chris Gregoire. Ask her to pass a bill to only let a dog be bred once and then fixed and change the price of a license to $1000 for each animal they have. That would at last slow them down. I also sent what I have put in this letter. I feel so sorry for all those little dogs.

Kathleen Vogel
Delridge

(Editor's note: This is a response to the editorial that ran Feb. 11 in the West Seattle Herald and Ballard News-Tribune.)

Dear Editor,

This is a brave, but essentially futile argument. To deal with the strawman elements of your argument first:

1. You don’t have to listen to the firehose of tweets and liveblogging. Blogging produces the compact summaries as well. And there are blogs that are beating newspaper levels of smart and authoritative summarization.

2. Online advertising: when you do the math right, your ‘print is better’ claim is quite simply, WRONG for many markets (especially long-tail and niche) today, and will be wrong for most in about 5 years. You clearly are basing your analysis on wishful thinking. I know exactly how many people click on ads on my blog, and enough people do to keep Google in business.

Perhaps if all the Robinson Newspapers were willing to pay for quality reporters, writers and editors, they would have nothing to fear from news blogs. Newspapers on the cheap are just cheap newspapers.

True, I don’t want to read a 3000-word amateur blog on a city council decision. Unfortunately, Robinson Newspapers does not deliver capable analysis or investigation in its 300 words on the same decision. Don’t pay people and they don’t do the work.

Don’t fear the blogs -- do a better job than the blogs!

Do that and you have my eyes.

Stephen Lamphear
Seattle

What a terrible tragedy that occurred in the middle of our junction on Superbowl Sunday evening.

Shall we all wake up and do something about it?

A shooting in our junction is just NOT acceptable. A young life has been lost. .

This is OUR problem, this is OUR community.

Maybe you ask...what can I do about this?

How about attending a community crime prevention meeting or setting up your own neighborhood block watch.

How about calling or writing to our Mayor to let him know that the people of West Seattle will not stand for senseless violence in our community and that we want the perpetrators of this crime off of our streets.

How about asking for more police presence in the junction especially on the weekends and, as concerned citizens how about reporting any suspicious behavior in your neighborhood to the police without hesitation.

We have lost a member of our West Seattle Community, a young man that did not deserve to have his life taken away from him.
Let us all try and do something to stop violence in our community.

 Teressa Keenehan
Seattle

I have the solution. Millions of other Americans have also thought of the same plan. It is simple! No Greed! Safe! and could be implemented overnight, thus immediately solving the problem with quick results for the country.

1. Implement a price freeze that will eliminate the greed that could follow. This freeze could eventually be changed as cost of living index is raised when the economy is revamped.

2. Divide the proposed bail out money of 840 billion dollars between the 150 million American taxpaying citizens only. This would stimulate each of the household a modest $5,600. The people would feel more comfortable. Businesses would pick up just enough to stop the depression that is lurking around the corner. People will buy new televisions, down payments on new automobiles, make mortgage payments, pay off credit cards, etc. This may be just enough to be a shot in the arm for the average citizen as well as for our country.

If you think the above plan has merit, please share the information with your friends and congressmen who are a part of the decision making body.

I think you missed the boat entirely on your blog conclusions!

First, and foremost, blogs and online news sites are the way of the future. They just are. The only reason newspapers aren’t obsolete yet is because there are at least two generations of people who aren’t entirely comfortable navigating the internet. Once these folks aren’t the primary news targets, newspapers will largely be out the door. Community newspapers will only survive if they can attain a greater level of relevancy and timeliness than they currently achieve. This is a given.

While your comments are surely true of some neighborhood Web sites, those produced by actual news reporters like the West Seattle Blog actually give us the best of both worlds... nearly instant communication, reader input and quality reporting.

What might be missed is the opportunity for more in depth reporting from a variety of reporters.

Wouldn’t it be better to take learn from the best of the neighborhood blogs as you move towards an on-line presence than to class and condemn them as as amateur productions?

Joanne Brayden
Seattle