Tim Burgess' City View

Three Mondays in May Start Tonight

Tonight at 6 o’clock several Councilmembers will be at North Seattle Community College for the first of Three Mondays in May. I hope to see you tonight or the next two Mondays.

Three Mondays in May is part of the Council’s effort to listen to the people of Seattle about your priorities for City government. How should we be spending your tax dollars? Where should our primary focus be? If we must reduce spending, where should the cuts be focused? Your opinions are valuable to us, so come out tonight and share them with us.

North Seattle
Monday, May 7, 2012, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
North Seattle Community College
9600 College Way North
College Center, Cafeteria (note room change)

Central Seattle
Monday, May 14, 2012, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
Seattle Central Community College
1701 Broadway
Broadway Edison Building, Room BE1110

South Seattle
Monday, May 21, 2012, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
New Holly Gathering Hall
7054 32^nd Ave South

A flier that can be distributed with more information is available here. 

May Day, Anarchists and a Woman from China

Yesterday was quite the day.

The weather forecast called for rain throughout the day, yet the sun popped out and I was confident I could make it to and from City Hall on my scooter without getting drenched.

Then, on a day to celebrate the effective and necessary role of labor unions, along with a separate march celebrating the importance of immigrants and the need for immigration reform, chaotic violence and property destruction occurred downtown.

Self-described anarchists mingled with peaceful May Day demonstrators at Westlake Park, covered their faces with masks or bandanas and engaged in destructive acts of vandalism and violence.  It stopped almost as quickly as it started; the anarchists pulled off their black clothing and melted away into the larger crowd once again, though not before some were arrested. (The Seattle Times has extensive coverage of all this in today’s newspaper.)

Gardens of Democracy

Local authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer have a second book out and it will inspire you with its roadmap to creating true community.  Read this book to discover a new way to view our economic and political system and to get past the labelilng and name calling of public discourse.  It's a great read.

Eric and Nick were guests on the Charlie Rose show this past week. Watch the video at http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/12324.

Let Your Voice Be Heard

Join the Seattle City Council for one of three conversations in May about the City budget and community priorities. You will engage City Councilmembers and your neighbors in conversation centered on five thought-provoking questions about the future of our City. A flier that can be distributed with more information is available here.

Let your voice be heard at one of the following dates and locations:

North Seattle
Monday, May 7, 2012, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
North Seattle Community College
9600 College Way North
College Center, Room 1161

Central Seattle
Monday, May 14, 2012, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
Seattle Central Community College
1701 Broadway
Broadway Edison Building, Room BE1110

South Seattle
Monday, May 21, 2012, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
New Holly Gathering Hall
7054 32^nd Ave South

The Next Fifty and Free Opera

The Next Fifty celebration at the Seattle Center kicked off last Saturday with great fanfare. This year marks the 50^th anniversary of Seattle’s 1962 World’s Fair and lately there has been a lot of interesting chatter about the history and future of our city. (Check out this letter from the 1962 City Council to the “2,012” City Council.)

The celebrations will continue the next six months and many arts organizations that make their home at the Seattle Center are taking part. On Saturday, May 5, the Seattle Opera is hosting a free HD simulcast in Key Arena for the opening night McCaw Hall performance of Madama Butterfly, the final show of its season. Up to 8,000 tickets are available for what is expected to be the largest live opera audience in Seattle history. Don’t think opera is for you? Read these opera myths debunked on the Seattle Opera Web site.

Saving Millions Through Tight Fiscal Management

News today that the three major credit rating agencies—Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch—have reaffirmed Seattle’s high bond ratings confirms that our focused and strong fiscal management approach is the correct strategy.

The excellent ratings validate our actions over the past several years to maintain a solid financial foundation. Despite the sluggish economy and significant budget cuts, the Council and Mayor, along with the Retirement Board of Administration and City employees, worked together to keep our fiscal house in order. The excellent bond ratings strongly affirm the course we have followed.

The City, including City Light and Public Utilities, use debt financing for capital improvement programs and spend approximately $370 million per year to service this debt. High bond ratings translate into lower interest payments that save millions of dollars in debt service payments. 

Could You Survive Extreme Senior Management Turnover?

Consider whether any business or nonprofit organization could survive if, in a six year period, they racked up senior management turnover statistics like the following:

4   different Chief Executive Officers
4   different Chief Division Officers
5   different Chief Financial Officers
6   different Vice Presidents of HR
3   different General Legal Counsels
5   different Special Division Directors
4   different Chief Operating Officers
4   different Chief Information Officers
3   different Communications Directors
17 different Board Members

Could your company handle such disruption among key employees? That's an average of nine senior management changes in each of the six years. Nine key leaders gone each year. Can you guess the Seattle organization that experienced this level of leadership turnover in the six years ending in 2011?

Roxhill Stars Rock!

Council President Sally Clark and I visited Roxhill Elementary School last Friday morning. It was one of those visits that pump you up and get you excited.

Roxhill is barely inside the city's southern boundary, hugging the north side of Southwest Roxbury Street. It's a Level 3 school in Seattle's numeric grading system (that's a C letter grade), improved from Level 1 just two years ago. Credit goes to Principal Carmela Dellino and her staff of 29 dedicated and engaging teachers for the progress.

Roxhill's student population is more diverse than the city as a whole—27% Black, 40% Hispanic, 17% Asian/Pacific Islander, 12% White. Thirty-five percent of Roxhill's students are English language learners. Seventy-five percent of the students are enrolled in the free/reduced lunch program. Twenty-three percent of the students receive special education attention. Student achievement lags behind the school district's overall elementary school averages, but Roxhill students are getting better on their reading, math, writing and science tests. Their academic improvement rate beat district-wide averages in both math and reading in the 2010-2011 school year.

After walking the hallways of Roxhill and visiting classrooms, you can see why. The visit revealed a school focused on learning. It was orderly and clean. Students worked well together. Teachers and their helpers, including student teachers from the UW, were walking around, sitting on the floor, encouraging and drawing out the best from their students.

We saw child-focused commitment.  We saw teachers and student teachers pouring themselves into the kids. We saw the order and discipline of the building and classrooms.  We saw engaging and stimulating teaching methods being used.  We saw kids who were learning, having fun and working with each other. We sat in on a local government civics lesson for third graders.

Impressive. That's the word that kept coming to mind as I drove back to City Hall. Impressive principal and teachers. Impressive academic progress being made.

Roxhill is another example of a Seattle public school that's working.

Goldman Sachs Bails After Investments in Human Trafficking Exposed

Read Nicholas Kristof in Sunday's New York Times. It turns out Goldman Sachs was an investor in Village Voice Media, owners of Backpage.com, perhaps the leading human trafficking Web site in the United States. They specialize in providing a forum for pimps and johns to exploit women and girls, some as young as 13 or 14. 

Back in January, I blogged about the problem of coercive, exploitive prostitution in Seattle.  We documented that 67 individuals acting as pimps had victimized more than 78 girls and women in King County in a 42-month period; the vast majority of the victims were juveniles. Here's a chart that shows each of the cases and their final disposition.  

Well over half of the juvenile victims were exploited through commercial advertising on Backpage.com or other Internet sites. Shame on Village Voice Media and their investors for supporting and encouraging sexual exploitation of our children. 

Jim Larkin serves as the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Village Voice Media, Inc. You can write Mr. Larkin here.

More Steps to Stop Human Trafficking

I’ll be at the Washington BEST (Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking) kick-off later tonight in Belltown. Washington BEST is a new business-led initiative to combat human trafficking. It's an alliance that encourages businesses to adopt policies that explicitly oppose trafficking and to follow practices that prevent it from occurring on their premises. The Council passed a resolution supporting this initiative two weeks ago.

Businesses can be a powerful resource in the fight against trafficking. For example, in the area of sex trafficking, cabs, restaurants, bars, hotels and motels, and even retail malls are often locales used by traffickers. Businesses can educate employees about the problem, train employees to identify and report suspicious activity appropriately and make their premises and operations unwelcoming and risky to human traffickers.