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So it fell to the City Council to make some tough decisions, trimming back the mayor's proposals, yet trying to keep delivering core city services. The message couldn't have been clearer. To honor citizen priorities, the city would have to do more with less and to prepare to cut even deeper if 2010 turns out, as predicted, to be worse than 2009.
From the start of its budget process, the council has been working cooperatively with the mayor's office to identify reductions that would not adversely impact direct services or hurt vulnerable people. The projected shortfall, while not as deep as King County's budget chasm, poses a significant challenge. The city must approve a balanced budget. Unlike the federal government, we cannot spend money we don't have.
Our hard work and cooperative efforts have resulted in passage of a budget that streamlines government on the one hand, but still manages to deliver increased spending in three areas: shelter and food delivery, library collections and support services for domestic violence victims. We're budgeting for a $1 million increase in food delivery services on top of the mayor's proposed half million addition. The extra money will go to home delivery and bulk purchases for food banks. It will also help eligible families apply for food stamps.
However, while we were successful in getting through the year with few reductions we're looking ahead with the realization that things will likely get worse before they get better. 2009 does not offer much hope for being an easier or more robust budget year.
As a long-time chronicler of this city, I've seen lean times before. Seattle has faced many recessions throughout the years. From the 1971 billboard that asked, "Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights?" through the dot-com collapse in the early part of this decade, we have made it through tough times.
We'll make it through this downturn. We'll come out stronger. In the meantime, we're working together, being creative and sacrificing when and where necessary. Our goal, as it should be, is to put people first.
Smitty Gave at Work and at Home
Ralph "Gordy" Smith, also known as "Smitty," has had two successful careers: His many years working at Seattle City Light and his years of volunteering in his Lake City neighborhood.
These days, Smitty is retired from his first career. A lumberjack-sized man with tufts of iron-grey hair, an outdoors face and a ready smile, he walks with a cane. "Got only one lung," he explains as he seats himself in a booth at Claire's Pantry, a popular Lake City restaurant. He gets right to his story, pausing only to order "a turkey san with double cranberry sauce, potato salad and iced tea."
Born and raised in Bellingham, he says, he'd always wanted to work at Seattle City Light.
"I moved to Seattle in 1957; but I couldn't go to work for City Light until after I'd lived in the city for a year. Those were the rules. So I went to work at Boeing. Once I was legal, I took the lineman's exam – I was just short of an apprentice at Puget Power in Bellingham – and I got the job -- Oct. 19, 1959 it was -- I had to take a cut in pay."
Smitty's assignments at City Light included retrofitting incandescent street lights with mercury vapor lights and, later, with high pressure sodium lamps. At one point he had to troubleshoot the new lamps which, after only six months, began cycling on and off. Imagine his distress when he discovered the manufacturer was shipping the faulty lamps around the country from one dissatisfied customer to another. Smitty set about correcting that problem.
Other high points in his City Light career include installing special decorative lighting in historic districts and along the boulevard on the West side of Queen Anne Hill. He recalls an exchange with Germaine Magnuson, wife of the late Sen. Warren Magnuson, over the Queen Anne streetlights. Says Smitty, "She came to the door and greeted me warmly, saying, ‘Just call me Kitty'." Restoration of the streetlights required having the fixtures sandcast, but he was able to earn praise from "Kitty."
For his work at City Light, Smitty took home a number of awards, including the Homestead Award. He remarks, "I'm the father of the street-light numbering system." When people called in to report a malfunctioning light, say "just down from Denny and Fairview," it was difficult to pinpoint the outage. Smitty devised a system that gave each pole a number that easily identified the precise location.
But if City Light valued Smitty during his years there, the Lake City community values him more. He now serves as executive director of the Lake City Community Center at 12531 28th Ave. Northeast. The center, started in the 1940s as the Lake City Youth Center, is a true community effort. The Lake City Lions began acquiring the land in 1944 and, soon after, the project was donated to King County, only to be "bought" back for $1 when Lake City was annexed to Seattle in the 1950s.
The Lions enlisted other service clubs and community organizations, more than 30 of them. Individual memberships were sold for $5 apiece. There were community drives and the annual Salmon Bake. The facility, always in demand, expanded from a second-hand Quonset hut to a modest first building, with much of the construction labor donated. Additions have followed.
Smitty's involvement with the center dates from 1962 when he and his family moved to Lake City. He recalls, "I was invited to join the Lake City Vigilantes – they were called the ‘Bearded Vigilantes' in those days." The "vigilantes" funded civic activities by selling "shaving permits" to local residents, one of the activities that accompanied the neighborhood's Seafair celebration.
Shortly after becoming a vigilante, Smitty joined the Lions and assumed many of the jobs associated with keeping the center running. One of those was the annual "pancake breakfast."
"I'll never forget the time we set up for the breakfast with two portable grills and temporary electrical service using extension cords. We had a terrific turnout and, naturally, blew fuses. Someone substituted 10-penny nails and we ran the breakfast until the nails turned blue."
Smitty laughs at the memory. He recalls the long history of the community center, used for so many community events from dances – it's got a terrific floating hardwood floor – to doll shows, train meets, flea markets and dozens of other activities. The land that the Lake City Branch Library now occupies was part of the original Lions Club land purchase, handed over to the city "on a handshake."
"That's the way it was done in those days," Smitty remembers. He stops to pay tribute to some of the hardworking volunteers. He lists such community heroes as Albert and Ethel Davis, who started the Salmon Bake; Virgil Flaim, an early director, and the legendary Frank O'Brien, a resident who had a night-time career as a baker, but worked days as a volunteer, managing the center.
"Frank would never let women in ‘his' kitchen," says Smitty. "But his wife, Madeline, made pies -- rhubarb, blackberry, Marionberry. When we were due to meet at his house, we'd always ask, ‘Will Madeline bake?' And Frank would say, ‘You can ask her.'"
Now and again, the Lake City Community Center -- as it's now called – has had occasion to complain about relations with the city. It's not that the community center needs the city's financial support – it's always been self-supporting – but it does need to preserve some of its facilities. Take parking, for example. The city at one point had plans to put a sidewalk in front of the building, wiping out parking used for loading and for the disabled. It took some letter-writing and phone calling to convince the city that, although sidewalks are coveted in many neighborhoods, the stretch in front of the community center isn't the ideal choice.
More than 40,000 people use the Lake City Community Center in a year's time. Events are booked well into the next year or two. But it wouldn't happen without hard work on the part of today's volunteers, people like Smitty and others. They're the unsung heroes and heroines that make Seattle and its neighborhoods very special places.
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