4 ms·

Chiming in as a seattelite having spent significant time in Baltimore, Philly, and Colorado: We do some things rather well (Transparency, not entirely atrophie

Chiming in as a seattelite having spent significant time in Baltimore, Philly, and Colorado: We do some things rather well (Transparency, not entirely atrophied ability to enact infrastructure progress, reasonable decent levels of participation without rampant nimbyism, govt. not entirely compromised by special interest groups/corruption) and some things much less well. (Transit/road funding, communication with our constituencies (Although this could just be my own experiences), growth planning, Marijuana legalization, cryptocurrency policy) I don't think you should sell short the people who would complain about their govts, "there are worse elsewhere" always struck me as vacuous as the "Starving children in africa" argument; the fact that places like Flint exist doesn't make me happier at seeing building firms lobby for reduced contributions to e.g. sewage costs. In politics I've found there's usually something worth complaining about, and it's our impetus as citizens to be attentive and stay on top of it :) (I optimistically hope we complain because we, or at least I, am never going to think "well I can't improve it more." If we complained and never did anything about it, _THEN_ I think we'd deserve the jab)

loeg 8y ago
Did the city have much power over marijuana policy? It seems like that was mostly the state legislature, no?
- existencebox 8y ago
  You're entirely right. I was, laxly, overlapping county/city/state legislature, since they all have some amount of impact on your day to day. (Transportation, another of my example, at least in my county, is largely being hamstrung due to a trickle down of "lack of fed funding so lack of state funding so lack of city funding so ...")
mediaman 8y ago
Lack of transit funding no longer rings true. The area just funded $50 billion in one of the most ambitious public transit expansion projects in the country, with heavy expansion of the train network. This is after an expansion still completing to grow its rail network. (Granted, it should have happened earlier, but this criticism seems less valid now than 20 years ago.) And SPD stopped enforcing marijuana laws well before the state legalized it. It was classified as "the lowest possible enforcement priority". And then, last year, Seattle vacated all misdemeanor marijuana charges from prior to legalization. Seattle, overall, seems reasonably well-managed. I think City Council gets up to antics now and then - they nearly lost $12 million in federal funds because of some political grandstanding in December - but the staff who actually run the city seem to do a good job. Sometimes the level of effort to communicate and involve citizens slows down needed progress, such as the upzoning efforts designed to increase density, but they would get criticized for not doing that too.
- existencebox 8y ago
  "Lack of transit funding no longer rings true." I can only address this for the Duvall area, but I can't agree with this statement. According to the latest city council meetings I was at, we're slated for >11% YoY growth in population (mandated at a higher level of govt, to my understanding, and without commensurate increases in funding), but have consumed our road repair funding for the next 5 years. This not including regular shutdown of the only two roads across the river, for which we have to beg Redmond to fund repairs for if issues happen, not even getting INTO the boondoggle that was the novelty hill switchback being built at half bandwidth due to legal/contractor malfeasance. (I'm also frankly, as you say, still bitter that the train buildout didn't start years ago, going back home to philly and being able to easily get into center city from >hour out via train is _such a relief_) Enforcement was actually less my issue than how they've handled licencing. There was IIRC a lottery for licensing and they didn't take into account actual grower realized capacity, which alongside some very high tax levels, puts it non-competitive with the black market, has lowered quality and availability, and makes it very difficult to create new businesses. I'd certainly agree with "Reasonably well managed" and would hope my complaints don't paint over the successes that I also mentioned. As you say with the city council grandstanding (and I'd mention some of the corruption in the ports prior) there are some pockets of issues, and that's why I try to "stay hungry" as it were for being on my local govts to improve themselves.
  - debatem1 8y ago
    I don't understand. Duvall is a separate city from Seattle. Is there some tie-in on road funding I'm not aware of?
    - existencebox 8y ago
      That's the understanding they communicated to us. Basically, the inter-township roads are funded in large part by the larger funding pools (redmond+seattle) and oftentimes "Growth funding" has to trickle down from federal, state and county levels. Apologies in advance if I'm totally off base, I'm trying to repeat near-verbatim what I heard in township/county meetings on this topic. (congestion and growth)
mncharity 8y ago
> "there are worse elsewhere" always struck me as vacuous [...] There's a suggestion that when discussing design objectives with a client, it's better to provide multiple prototypes than one, as their differences then become vocabulary for the discussion. I wonder if public dialog might be served by having a richer set of such landmarks. Instead of abstractions like "transparency is good", perhaps more concrete comparison and competition like "look at that transparency in city A - let's aspire to that". And negative exemplars like "we are sooo much better than city B - yay us", and cautionary tales "but let's not get too cocky, given how fast city C declined", and peer pressure "wait, a few years ago we were ahead of city D, but now look at them - we've got to get moving here". Policy choices are currently discussed as "that might tend to have these effects" and whistles, rather than as "that would make us more like cities E or F and less like G or H - is that what we want?" So I wonder if one could have a nuanced, specific, and helpful use of "that is done better/worse in some other place"?

loeg 8y ago

Did the city have much power over marijuana policy? It seems like that was mostly the state legislature, no?

existencebox 8y ago
You're entirely right. I was, laxly, overlapping county/city/state legislature, since they all have some amount of impact on your day to day. (Transportation, another of my example, at least in my county, is largely being hamstrung due to a trickle down of "lack of fed funding so lack of state funding so lack of city funding so ...")

mediaman 8y ago

Lack of transit funding no longer rings true. The area just funded $50 billion in one of the most ambitious public transit expansion projects in the country, with heavy expansion of the train network. This is after an expansion still completing to grow its rail network. (Granted, it should have happened earlier, but this criticism seems less valid now than 20 years ago.) And SPD stopped enforcing marijuana laws well before the state legalized it. It was classified as "the lowest possible enforcement priority". And then, last year, Seattle vacated all misdemeanor marijuana charges from prior to legalization. Seattle, overall, seems reasonably well-managed. I think City Council gets up to antics now and then - they nearly lost $12 million in federal funds because of some political grandstanding in December - but the staff who actually run the city seem to do a good job. Sometimes the level of effort to communicate and involve citizens slows down needed progress, such as the upzoning efforts designed to increase density, but they would get criticized for not doing that too.

existencebox 8y ago
"Lack of transit funding no longer rings true." I can only address this for the Duvall area, but I can't agree with this statement. According to the latest city council meetings I was at, we're slated for >11% YoY growth in population (mandated at a higher level of govt, to my understanding, and without commensurate increases in funding), but have consumed our road repair funding for the next 5 years. This not including regular shutdown of the only two roads across the river, for which we have to beg Redmond to fund repairs for if issues happen, not even getting INTO the boondoggle that was the novelty hill switchback being built at half bandwidth due to legal/contractor malfeasance. (I'm also frankly, as you say, still bitter that the train buildout didn't start years ago, going back home to philly and being able to easily get into center city from >hour out via train is _such a relief_) Enforcement was actually less my issue than how they've handled licencing. There was IIRC a lottery for licensing and they didn't take into account actual grower realized capacity, which alongside some very high tax levels, puts it non-competitive with the black market, has lowered quality and availability, and makes it very difficult to create new businesses. I'd certainly agree with "Reasonably well managed" and would hope my complaints don't paint over the successes that I also mentioned. As you say with the city council grandstanding (and I'd mention some of the corruption in the ports prior) there are some pockets of issues, and that's why I try to "stay hungry" as it were for being on my local govts to improve themselves.
- debatem1 8y ago
  I don't understand. Duvall is a separate city from Seattle. Is there some tie-in on road funding I'm not aware of?
  - existencebox 8y ago
    That's the understanding they communicated to us. Basically, the inter-township roads are funded in large part by the larger funding pools (redmond+seattle) and oftentimes "Growth funding" has to trickle down from federal, state and county levels. Apologies in advance if I'm totally off base, I'm trying to repeat near-verbatim what I heard in township/county meetings on this topic. (congestion and growth)

mncharity 8y ago

> "there are worse elsewhere" always struck me as vacuous [...] There's a suggestion that when discussing design objectives with a client, it's better to provide multiple prototypes than one, as their differences then become vocabulary for the discussion. I wonder if public dialog might be served by having a richer set of such landmarks. Instead of abstractions like "transparency is good", perhaps more concrete comparison and competition like "look at that transparency in city A - let's aspire to that". And negative exemplars like "we are sooo much better than city B - yay us", and cautionary tales "but let's not get too cocky, given how fast city C declined", and peer pressure "wait, a few years ago we were ahead of city D, but now look at them - we've got to get moving here". Policy choices are currently discussed as "that might tend to have these effects" and whistles, rather than as "that would make us more like cities E or F and less like G or H - is that what we want?" So I wonder if one could have a nuanced, specific, and helpful use of "that is done better/worse in some other place"?