Love parks? Hate Nickels? Discuss…
Activists connected to eight disparate Seattle neighborhood issues are staging a rally at 8:30 Saturday morning at the south entrance of the Woodland Park Zoo. Each will speak for a few minutes about the one thing they all have in common: contempt for Mayor Greg Nickels’ Parks and Recreation department.
Their complaints fall into three categories:
1) The parks department pulls a “switcheroo”; i.e. saying it will do one thing only to do another. At the zoo, for instance, neighbors say they were led to believe they’d convinced parks officers it wasn’t worth devoting park space to a four-story, above-ground parking garage, when a smaller, below-ground garage would suffice. Instead, the big, above-garage will be built. (The rally coincides with the zoo’s parking garage design workshop.) Other alleged switcheroos: daylighting of Ravenna Creek and the skatepark at Lower Woodland Park.
2) The parks department takes public comment, only to act against those public comments. This applies to the Summer Nights concert series’ re-location to Gas Works Park, as well as the decision to install lighting over the ball fields at Magnuson Park. “They make a decision about what to do and then they tell people and then they have public hearings,” says Diane Duthweiler, one of the rally organizers. “But it doesn’t matter how many people are against it. It’s too late to stop it.” It’s her suspicion that the parks department is engaging in “backroom deals.”
3) The parks department exercises bad judgment. See Occidental Park, where trees are being removed despite neighbors’ protests; or the building of condos near Discovery Park; or the installation of synthetic grass in the Loyal Heights Playfield.
But batting leadoff in this lineup is Al Runte, the mayoral candidate responsible for last year’s local spike in the usage of the term “quixotic.” He will be accusing the city of exploiting public parks for private interests, or something like that.
If all goes according to plan, the rally will end with a march along Phinney Avenue to the zoo’s west entrance.
I saw a flier outside my apartment advertising this rally, and I had two quick comments.
1. Who in their right minds feel like protesting at 8:30 on a Saturday morning? And as neighbor, wouldn't I be kinda pissed to see hippie "marchers" outside my door that early. Wouldn't that be, oh, counterproductive to the cause?
2. What kind of a pussy march lasts a whole 0.3 miles? http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=N+50th+St+%26+Aurora+Ave+N,+Seattle,+WA+98103+%4047.665070,-122.347330&daddr=N+57th+St+%26+Phinney+Ave+N,+Seattle,+WA+98103&f=d&hl=en&dq=north+50th+and+aurora+ave+n+seattle&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=67.548891,110.917969