Sally's Blog

Is there a worse blow to your karma than robbing a food bank the week before Thanksgiving? I guess it could be worse if you rob a food bank in the part of Seattle with the lowest incomes. I guess that would be a worse blow to your karma.

The Rainier Valley Food Bank had their external storage container cleaned out by thieves Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. They had enough food inside the warehouse (and I use that term loosely as it's a tiny space) to serve the regular Wednesday morning crowd of seniors and disabled people, but Saturday -- the day after tomorrow -- low- income individuals and families will line-up for help making it through Thanksgiving week, the week of giving thanks for bounty and cooperation. The food bank is accepting donations 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 4205 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118. If you aren't able to help Rainier Valley Food Bank make up the loss, maybe consider helping out the food bank in your part of town. Overall Seattle's food banks report 50 percent to 100 percent increases in the numbers of people lining up for help. The Mayor and Council made sure next year's City budget maintains City support for food banks, but no one’s budgets anticipate grand-scale thievery from food banks.

I and my staff volunteered at the Rainier Valley Food Bank earlier this year on a Wednesday. They run a great operation. No food bank deserves to be ripped off. It's hard to imagine the thinking behind the crime. Taking the entire contents of the storage container isn't about an individual who is hungry. Will they re-sell the bags of rice, the boxes of pasta, the cans of tuna? I'm clearly missing the master- mind strategy of it all.

Last week ended with the memorial service at Key Arena for Seattle Police Officer Timothy Brenton. It was a moving, sometimes funny, sometimes jarring display of ceremony, ritual, testimony and a few tears. The entire floor of Key Arena was a sea of blue SPD uniformed officers. Brenton’s wife and two children were in the front row. During the opening and closing ceremonies the floor aisles filled with uniformed officers from all over the Northwest. The keening bagpipes were offset by the crack report of the 21-gun salute by the Washington State Patrol’s ceremony rifle team.

An hour later the news broke that a man had been shot by police in Tukwila as officers staked out a car matching the vehicle SPD suspected was involved in the Halloween night killing of Officer Brenton. Since then investigators have found explosives, assault rifles and printed material about abuses by police officers.

I have done a few ride-alongs with SPD officers since coming onto the Council. More often than not at some point in the night my assigned officer for the evening calls home on his cellphone while we’re out to say hello and good night to someone. Usually I hear a few questions about how someone’s day was or what the kids are doing. The calls are short. Pretty much the same type most of us make during our work day. I wonder if Officer Brenton made a call like that Halloween night.

It is incredibly disappointing to finally get the call we’ve been expecting: that Boeing has chosen to open the second 787 line in South Carolina. I know there must be appreciable technical reasons to open the second line in the Palmetto State, but it’s hard to not assume that $14 an hour and no union sealed the decision against opening the second line in Everett . The promised $170 million in grants in return for 3,800 jobs over seven years probably helped.

Puget Sound’s Boeing workers earn more (and, yes, deal with a higher cost of living) and bargain collectively with the company for wages and benefits. They’ve produced planes for decades and done it better than anywhere else. It’s been and will continue to be a great partnership, but I wish “the market” recognized good compensation. Instead, it seems like the South Carolina decision is yet another reflection that cheap labor trumps.

I was out for a couple of days late last week. Before cutting out Wednesday afternoon I was in a hurry to get all the “going out of town” tasks done. Clean up the desk a little. Double-check the calendar. Activate the email responder. Pack up the “to read” material for the flight. I grabbed everything and headed out to grab the dog and take him to the doggy hotel in the short time I had before getting to the Council’s budget public hearing at the Northwest African-American Museum.

I stopped being in a rush as I came off I-5 to get onto I-90 on my way to Rainier Ave. S. In front of me blocking the right lane at the end of the connecting ramp was a car, perpendicular across my lane and smashed into the concrete barrier to the right. I was the third person there. Airbags had popped, clear fluid was running out the front of the car and we were awash in traffic noise. A young guy had pulled over ahead of the wreck and was talking to the driver, a woman leaning back and not moving, but talking. As I walked toward them he motioned for me to call 9-1-1, so I dashed the few steps back to my car and called. It was then that I realized I had no idea how to turn up the volume on my phone. I did the best I could to describe where we were on the ramp and to hear the operator’s questions. I got off the phone, but started to worry whether I’d told the operator the right ramp direction. Was it really south-bound i_5 to east-bound I-90? Did I get that right?

In the meantime, more vehicles pulled over and the young guy kept talking to the driver. Turns out he’s an emergency medical technician in training. The only thing better if you’re in a wreck, I suppose, is if a doctor pulls over immediately – and that’s what happened next. Two of them! The second one pulled over and helped with what looked like a full emergency medical response bag. It was good timing for the woman in the wreck because before the doctor pulled over, the EMT in training, who was holding the woman’s head, told me to get her name, age, any medications she was taking, and to take her pulse. Weirdly, her husband had pulled up a moment before (apparently caravanning), so the name, age and medications weren’t too much of a challenge for me. I did then find out that I might not be the best person to take your pulse in an emergency.

I placed my fingers on her throat and found her pulse. Then I counted the beats over ten seconds. And then I multiplied.

“120,” I told the EMT in training. And then a few moments passed.

“No, 72. Yeah, 72. I did the math wrong.”

OK, standing between I-5 and I-90, math is not my strong suit. Looking at a person in a crunched car in pain, thinking and acting may not be my strong suits. Cripes. I’m thankful that the Seattle Fire Department pulled up soon after. I told the medic what I knew and then got out of the way, but I realized after driving on that I never told the EMT in training or the doctor how grateful I was that they stopped to help. I’d love to know who they were. I’d also like to know how the driver is. All I could find out later was that SFD didn’t handle the transport and instead called for a private ambulance. That can be an indication that the woman’s injuries weren’t life-threatening.

It’s comforting to know people will pull over and help each other. It’s even more comforting if they know how to multiply.

Last night's public hearing at Whitman Middle School (Crown Hill) on the proposed 2010 city budget was, for a budget hearing, sparsely attended. Maybe our outreach wasn't what it could have been. Maybe people just know there's no extra money to claim for their cause. In fact, among the pleas last night to restore cuts to library hours and human services advocacy groups, there was one speaker who asked the looming, critical question, "Are we cutting enough this year?" Specifically the speaker wondered how we're going to fare in 2011 if we deplete the "rainy day fund" this year.

It's the multi-multi-million dollar question and the basic answer is that we may not fare well. No one knows how quick the recession will come to an end in Seattle. Under the mayor's proposal we're taking $30 million of the $35 million reserve account to help plug the $72 million gap in the 2009 and 2010 General Fund budgets (the utilities and big bricks-and-mortar projects are separate from General Fund and usually happen with other, restricted money from ratepayers, the feds, the state or other funders). That means less of a piggy bank to hit next year when the gap could be $35 million.

Instead of looking to restore library hours or add to community center programming, should I instead be looking to lay off more than the approximately 150 people currently slated for layoffs? Some readers will say, "Hey, just cut that Mercer project or quit with the street cars." Neither of those projects if cut would yield General Fund dollars.

If you come up with great ideas about where to cut from the budget bring them to one of the two upcoming public hearings on the proposed 2010 budget:

Wednesday, Oct. 14, 5:30 p.m.
NW African-American Museum
2300 S. Massachusetts
(Judkins neighborhood)

Monday, October 26, 5:30 p.m. (4:30 p.m. for call-in comments)
City Hall, City Council Chambers
600 Fourth Ave.
(Downtown)

A recent paper from the Pew Charitable Trusts examines how a few cities, including Seattle, are dealing with budget shortfalls through furloughs and drastic layoffs. The paper provides good context for how we're doing relative to other cities. I'm always happy to be in Seattle. Even more so when I look at the budget numbers others are facing.