The annual West Seattle Chamber of Commerce Awards Breakfast honored Rick Jump, Director of the White Center Food Bank. Jump said, "I'm very honored. It's such a pleasure to be able to serve the community in which I live and anything that brings awareness to the issue of hunger in our community is a great thing. I'm very very happy." Jump wanted to emphasize that both the White Center and West Seattle Food Bank are participating in the Feinstein Million Dollar Giveaway in which every donation they receive in March and April will result in an additional gift from the Feinstein Foundation.

Others honored at the event were Salty's on Alki as Business of the Year, with Bonnie David and Cindy Smith accepting the award with owner Gerry Kingen looking on, The West Seattle Farmers Market was honored as the non-profit organization of the year. Chris Curtis accepted the award. Greg Whittaker spoke as the owner of Mountain to Sound Outfitters, winners of the Emerging Business award. "I learned the secret to making a small fortune in business is to invest a large fortune," Whittaker said which drew laughs from the crowd.

Jordan Royer son of former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer (also in attendance) was the keynote speaker. Royer who is a maritime-industry executive ran for City Council two years ago.

Royer spoke about transportation as a major issue facing the area but whose stated purpose was to "cheer you up." His primary view was optimistic saying, "If we play our cards right we're positioned to be one of the most successful regions in America and maybe the world." He drew contrasts between other port cities pointing out that there are no reasonable comparisons between them and Seattle and asked the question "What kind of do we want to be in the next five to ten years?"

He pointed to the current debate over the tunnel/viaduct as being an "experiment. The idea being that by making it extremely difficult to get around in an automobile it will force gridlock, so more people will take public transit in the hopes that more investments in public transit will be forthcoming. (...) Unfortunately we have a Mayor intent on dividing us between cars, buses, trains and bikes when in reality we need to plan for it all."

His speech can be downloaded at the link above right.

Other politicians were on hand including King County Executive Dow Constantine, County Councilmember Joe McDermott, and City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen.

Chamber President Dave Montoure spoke of the growth of the chamber whose membership has grown by 200%.