Supporters of district elections, which Seattle voters have rejected at least five times (in 1914, 1926, 1975, 1995, and 2003) hope that a hybrid district-at large system will finally win voter approval this year. According to consultant John Wyble, districts supporters are getting ready to start collecting signatures for a district elections initiative soon. In the meantime, they've formed the requisite Facebook group. And they've done some polling, which shows a hybrid system—with five city council members elected from geographical districts, and four elected at large (so that every citizen would get to vote for a majority of the council)—has substantial support (around 48 percent), although many people (36 percent) are undecided.

This post has been corrected, as noted in the text.

Tom Byers, a former deputy mayor to Paul Schell, proponent of bus-rapid transit, and founder of the Cedar River Group, sparked speculation at city hall that he was considering a run for mayor when he sent an email to city council members grousing about Seattle City Light's poor response during the December snowstorm. Byers, who lives in Madrona, was unable to report an outage in his area through City Light's reporting system because he was on a cell phone (!!) "I wound up in the Orwellian loop in which City Light's automated system refuses to let you in if you are calling from a cell and refers you to human operators who are not working on a Sunday," he wrote.

But what piqued the interest of some at city hall was the penultimate line of Byers' email: "I am beginning to wonder if maybe the only solution is to run for Mayor on a simple platform that says Seattle cannot be a world class city with third world infrastructure, and those who respectfully suggest improvements should get a meaningful response from their government!" Byers wrote.

Byers says that part of the email was a "joke." However, he adds, "I hope somebody does come forward. ... I think a good opponent would be a very good thing. If you get somebody good in [the running] who has a different kind of approach and tone and they give him a good run for his money, maybe we'll see some of the Greg Nickels I used to know when he was working for Norm Rice and when he was on the [King] County Council." Byers says the mayor's "top-down" approach was evident during last year's snowstorm, when city workers told him the Seattle Times that they weren't empowered to decide where and how to clear snow and which neighborhoods to get to first. Byers says he was without power for five days. 24 hours. [Byers's power was out for five days during the 2007 windstorm, not the December 2008 snowstorm].

In related news, the mayor's office just asked the city's ethics and elections department to review the Seattle Department of Transportation's (SDOT) response during the snowstorm. Yesterday, the Seattle Times reported that street-clearing crews gave preferential treatment to the Admiral District in West Seattle, where the mayor, SDOT chief Grace Crunican, and other top city officials live, while ignoring arterials in other parts of town. (Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis lives near Alki, not in the Admiral District). "We will demand answers to these management questions because the public must have confidence in the people charged with improving and carrying out our city’s snow response plan,” Nickels said in a statement.

With a looming budget crisis, the city council is looking high and low for places to make budget cuts.

One budget cut, which is apparently making the rounds at city hall, is to send the eight horses used by the Seattle Police Department’s to the glue factory.

The city spends about $100,000 a year to house and maintain the horses at a facility near Westcrest Park in West Seattle. If the city were to cut the mounted patrols, officers in the unit would be reassigned to other duties.

According to an emailed statement from Seattle Police Department spokeswoman Renee Witt, the mounted unit is "an integral part of the department":

The mounted unit is a working unit that is utilized everyday. In addition to parades, crowd control, community function events etc..

There are no plans to downsize the mounted unit.

While business owners and residents in the downtown core have been pleading with the city to increase the police presence, not everyone’s a fan of the mounted units.

“I think [the mounted patrols] are a double-edged sword,” says Nick Wells, Executive Director of the Pioneer Square Community Association. “They certainly fit the historic character of the neighborhood. But there’s an issue with waste. When a horse uses the bathroom, it’s not a small pile.”

Wells says the mounted units have turned Pioneer Square into a bit of a minefield and that he’d prefer to see more bike patrols in the area. "It’s interesting," Wells says. "The horse drawn carriages have bags that catch [horseshit] and SPD doesn’t. I had a very close call stepping into a large pile a few days ago.” he says.

Cutting SPD's mounted unit wouldn't come close to fixing a projected $30 million shortfall, but every little cut counts, at least until the economy is more stable.

Photo by Jason Anfinsen via Flickr.

Martin Kaplan, a city planning commissioner, architect, and past member of the Pike Place Market Historical Commission and the Queen Anne Community Council, has announced he's running against Nick Licata, a three-term member of the City Council. Kaplan—who says he's "bring to the table both downtown business interests and a firm foothold in the neighborhoods— is targeting Licata because he feels he has "marginalized" himself on the council, holding down the losing end of one 8-1 vote after another. For example, Kaplan says, Licata "almost poisoned" the discussion about whether to keep the Sonics in town by revamping KeyArena by mocking the very idea that sports teams contribute any value to cities. "It's not that I was sitting there saying we should spend whatever it takes to keep the Sonics, but Nick just dismissed the dialogue," Kaplan says. "There are a lot of reasons that we should be very critical of investments like that, [but] I never sensed that Nick was viewing the whole issue of the Sonics in a holistic manner."

Kaplan makes a similar critique of Licata's positions on the Alaskan Way Viaduct ("Nick’s against that because God forbid property owners down there should benefit"), the South Lake Union streetcar ("his response was just, 'no, no, no'"), and two-way Mercer, which Kaplan says Licata sees as "totally just an urban renewal project to benefit one property owner," South Lake Union mogul Paul Allen. "I see it in a much broader sense... We've got to combine these neighborhoods [Queen Anne, South Lake Union and Seattle Center] ... and give people an opportunity to find other ways besides Mercer and Denny to get to and from South Lake Union." Viewed as a neighborhood improvement project, Kaplan says, it doesn't matter that traffic times would actually increase slightly on a two-way Mercer boulevard; "we have got to knit those neighborhoods back together," he says.

Licata's other opponent in the race is Jessie Israel, a Ballard resident who has raised around $12,000.