The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board unanimously voted to designate Washington Hall, the brick venue at 14th Avenue and Fir Street, a historic landmark, reports Bill at Central District News. Now the difficult part begins for local preservation and arts groups: restoring the roof, plumbing, walls, boiler, and other failing elements of the deteriorating building. Historic Seattle says the repairs will costs about $8 million. More on the hall is here.

Or, as someone said in the comments to my post about the city auditor, "You would make a good auditor, Erica. U got the personalityy. (sic)"

Thank you, anonymous commenter! Now please go check out the city's revamped neighborhood mapping service (via West Seattle Blog), featuring the locations of every vaguely public facility, service provider, and attraction in 13 broadly defined Seattle neighborhoods—from farmers' markets to cemeteries to heritage trees. There are also links to active fire incidents
(a sort of visual version of the city's 911 log) and crime stats. The system's still a little buggy (entering a neighborhood more than once, you'll get vastly different maps—thanks, Microsoft!) but it's still a cool resource for city geeks (or people looking for the nearest food bank who happen to have a fast Internet connection.)

City Council member Tom Rasmussen has asked City Auditor Susan Cohen to explore doing an audit of city departments' response to the December snowstorm. The departments, meanwhile—including Seattle Public Utilities, City Light, and the Seattle Department of Transportation—are all doing their own "after-action reports" to evaluate their responses to the storm. However, given the departments' demonstrated tendency to defend their own performances, sometimes to the point of absurdity (SDOT head Grace Crunican was in Portland, but said it didn't matter because she doesn't drive a snowplow), an independent audit could shed some light on what the departments should do differently the next time.

Cohen says she does about a dozen audits a year, most of them at the direction of the city council. Unlike the departments' internal reviews, the auditor's reports are frequently critical and can be fascinating, to a certain kind of person. (I'm a fan of the recent audit on pedestrian and cyclist mobility around construction sites myself.) Some of the audits already underway this year include: A review of the city's tree management policies; a review of solid waste and wastewater revenue; a review of the cost and effectiveness of city traffic-calming projects; a review of how well the city's Neighborhood District Councils are performing; an analysis of whether cameras in parks deter crime; and an audit of security in the city's IT departments. "A lot of companies have problems with disgruntled employees," Cohen explains. Possible audits for 2009 include a review of city policies regarding Piper's Creek in Carkeek Park; a review of the parks department's fee structure; an audit of the city's 911 system; reviews of the city's street paving and sidewalk management programs; and the snow management audit.

The gays want you to wake up in time for a rally and march that begins tomorrow morning. The Queer Ally Coalition, spawned from the anti-Prop 8 protests in November, is planning Seattle's contingent of a national day of protest against the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 measure that prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

Click the poster for a larger image.

Marchers in 100 cities nationwide aim to gather 1,000,000 petition signatures that call on Barack Obama to uphold his pledge to gays during the presidential campaign. "I'm running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all—a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters,” Obama wrote in a letter to the LGBT community. “It's wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans."

Amy Balliett, who amassed the nationwide protest on November 15 by founding Jointheimact.org, writes in an email, “We will hold him accountable with his own words, but cannot expect him to listen without showing him how vast our numbers actually are."

But unlike the November 15th protests (which drew 10,000 people in Seattle), this event is gathering less steam—and it's unclear just how vast those numbers will be. The Seattle Department of Transportation estimates only 500 will attend. And a Facebook group founded in late December has only 207 members thus far (in contrast, the Seattle anti-Prop-8 Facebook group gathered 1,000 new members a day). “If there is a smaller turnout it’s not a fizzling of that energy, it’s a focusing of energy,” says Eli Steffen, 24, treasurer of Queer Ally Coalition. “It’s not about coming out one time [after Prop 8 passed] and shouting; it’s that you come out again and again and celebrate with your community.” The Queer Ally Coalition's priority is building a diverse LGBT movement.

“We wanted to show that our community is more than middle-class white men, and that is what we saw on November 15,” says Steffen. “That was shown by the fact that the only non-white person who spoke was a straight man.” Speakers tomorrow, he says, will represent Entre Hermanos, Democracy Insurgent, a Muslim student group at the UW, and others.

Where to go and what to do: The crowd will congregate in the south plaza of Seattle Central Community College beginning at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, January 10. Sign the petition there. At 11:30 a.m., the crowd will hightail its gay ass down to Westlake Center for speeches, bands, Sylvia O. Stayformore, and a hodgepodge of gaiety.