Tuesday, January 6, 2009
City City Council Storm Response Will Never, Ever End
Posted by Erica C. Barnett on Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 10:37 AM
The city council is currently holding the second of four meetings to evaluate the city and county's storm response; watch live online here. Currently, they're grilling Seattle City Light Director Jorge Carrasco, who's currently talking about the last major storm. Up next: The Department of Human Services, Seattle Public Utilities, Transportation (whose director, Grace Crunican, came off as defensive and out of touch yesterday—acknowledging, for example, that she was able to make it to Portland for Christmas while many Seattle residents were trapped in their homes), and King County Metro. Metro's director, Kevin Desmond, told me around Christmas that Metro was doing the best it could under rotten circumstances (roads that went unplowed; an antiquated system of getting information to the public). That answer was likely cold comfort to many Metro riders, who were often stuck at bus stops for hours with no information about when or whether their buses would arrive. (The decision to stay on a holiday schedule through January 2 was a further blow that left some riders busless for a full three weeks). Desmond will be speaking to the council in about half an hour, maybe a little more.
Share via
Yeah, the Internet is so old-fashioned and useless for getting information out. Is there anyone still alive who knows how to update a Web page? I doubt it.
SPU's Jorge Carrasco, an appointee of Jean Godden, was reappointed by her, in spit of the fact that many, certainly his subordinates, has serious question about his competency; will we see an expose into this reappointment of a man who donated to the campaign of the person that headed up his appointment?
Re: salt. That was a policy based executive decision by the mayor's office. Again, why are we screaming to council about this? Is council once again, being used as the stop-gap to diffuse public anger at yet another (perceived) city debacle? (a side note: I had no issue with the roads--I leaned how to drive in this wet stuff as a teen, and refined my skill in Michigan).
Finally, as one who was commuting from the South end to Interbay before, during, and after the storm in the early morning hours, I have to say that I was pleased at having a reliable north-south highway to by-pass the 6 or so inches of stuff on the surface streets, where neither buses nor rail (frozen switches) were running. I would say WASHDOT's response and management of their roads were far above the rest of our municipalities.
In short, we get turnover at city hall more often then we get one of these major storms. We will have public hearings, studies, etc, but few of these people will be around next time it happens. These storms do not happen enough for information to be retained institutionally, and every one of them is a little different.
My question to the writer is this: when the next one happens, and it will, and Seattle not being a city that will never have enough storms like this to hone the experience and organization is takes to manage public transportation and for that matter, private transportation, what do you think downtown, the south end, and West Seattle would look like without a WASHDOT clean Viaduct or some kind of replacement?
Not leaving Capitol Hill is not one of the answers I'm afraid. And I'm afraid that this storm is another on the list of indictments as to why the Stranger's Party Line on Viaduct abolition is fallacy.
Just wondering.
Two girl reporters ... must have been ultra-hot
Erica,
Just for shits n'grins, could you do a little investigative reporting and find out how much taxpayer money was spent on salting the roads Sunday night/Monday morning to save us from snow we all knew would really be gone by noon anyway?
They are proposing to bore a tunnel underneath 6th Street? Sounds like a promising alternative.
Did SLOG slog it and I missed it?
ECB? anyone? Buehler?
Why are they grilling Jorge? City Light actually did pretty well this time around.
Most Commented on Slog
-
Life and Death in a Recliner in South Carolina by Dan Savage
-
Becoming a Man by Dan Savage
-
Pit Bulls! by Dan Savage
-
SL Letter of the Day: Hot & Drunk by Dan Savage
-
WTF? by Dan Savage
-
Your Wife Died Alone... by Dan Savage
-
Meanwhile in Vancouver by Dan Savage
-
Health at Every Size by Dan Savage
-
Precious: Brutal New Classic or African-American Bruno? by David Schmader
-
The Democrats Have 60 Votes in the Senate for Health Care Reform by Jonathan Golob
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
Comments (22) RSS