Via West Seattle Blog comes news that Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes is proposing that the next city budget restore the Seattle Police Department’s full-time liaison program. The program helped local communities with problems that might have been missed otherwise, such as public nuisances and neighborhood-specific issues, but the program was severely reduced due to budget cuts in recent years. Holmes hopes that the upcoming budget will fully restore the program, reinstating one liaison per precinct.
Read the news release from Holmes’ office for details:
Backed by community and business leaders and City Council members, City Attorney Pete Holmes on Wednesday advocated for a full complement of five police precinct liaisons to bolster the City’s response to emerging and increasingly complex neighborhood public safety and regulatory issues.
Holmes’ 2012 budget proposal, as submitted to the City Budget Office on July 13, would reinvent the Precinct Liaison Program by providing a full-time assistant city attorney in each police precinct. These attorneys will focus on providing critical legal services on the issues of high importance in their precincts. They will also be accountable for managing a number of regulatory provisions in a more effective and efficient manner because they will better understand the dynamics in the individual communities.
Due to budget reductions and attrition in recent years the program has been reduced by 60%. “We have tried to preserve the core functions of the Precinct Liaison Program but with only two attorneys we can no longer provide the full range of legal services that the Seattle Police Department and our community have come to expect,” said Holmes, who seeks an additional $470,000 in the budget year beginning Jan. 1, 2012 to fully fund the program. “Right now it’s more appropriate to call them circuit-riding liaisons,” he said, because the remaining two liaisons travel among the North, East, West, South and Southwest Precincts. “Clearly, the status quo is unacceptable.”
Councilmember Tim Burgess, chair of the Council’s Public Safety and Education Committee, strongly supports a revitalized program. “Reestablishing the precinct liaison attorney program reflects our desire to bring critical thinking and innovation to policing. We know that effective policing uses a wide variety of means beyond traditional police responses. These attorneys will partner with our officers to proactively tackle neighborhood safety and crime challenges,” Burgess said.
The Precinct Liaison Program was created in 1995 to give direct and proactive legal advice to police officers and to act as a legal resource for public safety problem-solving efforts in the neighborhoods. The program has since fluctuated in size as grant funding has come and gone and city budgets have tightened.
The current staffing makes it impossible to provide geographic-based legal services for either SPD or the community. Next month the remaining two liaisons will be brought into the City Attorney’s Office downtown to work on criminal cases as well as regulatory matters for the remainder of 2011.
The increased demands on precinct liaisons are varied and voluminous, Holmes said. Two of them — nightlife regulations and liquor licenses — relate specifically to the interplay between the entertainment industry and the neighborhoods, and Holmes’ plan is endorsed by industry leaders. [Read more →]
Many Quee Anne-ers caught a surprise fireworks show on Saturday night. For those of you who, like me, missed out on the action, we hear there’s another show planned over Elliott Bay on Saturday, March 27.
The West Seattle Blog is reporting that General Construction Company will be celebrating its centennial with some big lights at around 7:30 p.m. on the 27th. From the West Seattle Blog,
Coincidentally, that night is also this year’s date for “Earth Hour”– 8:30 pm, an hour after the calendar says the fireworks will be happening.
So there you have it. At 7:30 p.m., climb up to Kerry Park to catch the fireworks show, then go home and turn your lights off for the environment at 8:30. I’ll definitely be there!
(Thanks to the West Seattle Blog for digging this up!)
Apparently there were some pretty stunning fireworks over Elliott Bay at around 8 p.m. this evening. Reader Peggy Fitzgerald wrote,
Really nice fireworks show tonight over Elliott Bay! There’s some news on it from the West Seattle blog (since I had no idea why there was an amazing show tonight – they were really excellent)
According to the West Seattle Blog, Farmers Insurance celebrated its 100th anniversary with a party at the Space Needle and fireworks show off the waterfront tonight. Details here.
I missed the show myself. Did anyone else see it, or happen to catch a picture?
Last night some 50 homeless men and women, members of the homeless-advocacy group SHARE (Seattle House and Resource Effort) camped outside Mayor Greg Nickels’ West Seattle home in peaceful protest of the city’s denial of funding for bus passes used to get from shelter to shelter. (See the West Seattle Blog coverage here). Tonight they’ll be bunking down on top of the hill, in front of Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess‘ home starting at 8 p.m.
The video above is from the West Seattle Blog’s coverage of last night’s protest outside Mayor Nickels’ home.
SHARE, a grassroots organization, helps 400-500 homeless people organize together and find housing each night at one of their 14 self-managed shelters and two Tent Cities. In a press release sent out prior to last night’s protest, the organization explained that last year they submitted a request for additional funding from the City for bus tickets for their members so that they could travel between shelters, service organizations and tent cities safely. On September 22, their bus fare money ran out. Here is what they wrote:
A year ago, SHARE, a grassroots sheltering and organizing effort of homeless people, submitted a green sheet asking for additional funding from the City. Our green sheet mysteriously disappeared in the Mayor’s office and never made it in front of the City Council to be voted upon!
The politicians failed to heed SHARE’s pleas for an additional $50,000 in funding to keep 500 men and women going to and from their shelters with bus tickets. This is only $100 per person and shows the overt contempt the City Officials have for homeless people.
Our elected officials are inept in more ways than one especially when it comes to practicing the three tenets of good government (Justice, Compassion, Common Sense). They are more likely to respond to corporate pleas for bailouts than to the needs of the poor.
$50,000 is a ridiculously low amount of money for a City which wastes millions of dollars on a useless computer tracking survey and is wasting 1.6 Million bailing out an underused and useless light rail.
Apparently our leaders are more interested in monitoring homeless people’s activities than in keeping them together and safe at low cost.
Our shelters cost less than 3 dollars a night compared to the City “sweeps” shelter which costs over 21 dollars a night
Having been ignored, this leaves us with no other choice but to close down our shelters due to lack of transportation and sleep outside of the Mayor’s and the City Council members’ houses.
All we can say is SHAME!!!
(206) 448-7889
According to SHARE, all neighborhood bus shelters except one got to their safe places without a bus ticket, due to the kindness of city bus drivers. (The organization is keeping a tally of member riders who are given transport to their shelters without bus tickets so that they may reimburse METRO as soon as funds are available). Those who cannot get to their shelters will spend the night outside Councilmember Burgess’ home.
The protests were planned at a SHARE meeting on Monday morning (see Seattle Post Globe coverage here), in an attempt to take direct action and alleviate homelessness in Seattle.
Queen Anne View will be covering the protest tonight, so check back for updates.
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