By all accounts, the city council is expected to pass an ordinance this afternoon to allow cottages up to 800 square feet in backyards. Based on recent testimony at city council hearings, cottages—ranging from converted garages to hyper modern—are especially popular with growing families, aging families, and folks who want to raise a little rent. Today's vote would expand a 2006 pilot project in Southeast Seattle. But they have hardly hardly prolific in the pilot area; only 17 were built. Nonetheless, residents of northeast and northwest Seattle had kittens at the prospect of a cottage boom, calling it the end of single-family zoning and a threat to Seattle. Even the normally-reasonable Marty Liebowitz, a developer, wrote a post on Central District News the other day calling this “judgment day for the fate of single-family neighborhoods.” He says cottages will loom over backyards, encroaching on privacy in our homes and gardens.

Liebowitz warns: “If passed on November 2nd, none of our rear yard sanctuaries is safe. No longer can we toke up in private or sunbathe au naturelle. No longer can we and our backyard critters enjoy a moment or careless, peaceful, piece of mind.”

But Leibowitz should know that two-story structures looking over backyard fences aren't all bad. His business, the Madrona Company, built Miller Mews, an eight-unit town house development in the Central District in the late 1990s directly between two single-family homes (I know because I was a painter on Leibowitz's project, hanging from a ladder and looking into the backyards of people who were smoking pot).

I respectfully disagree with Liebowitz (who can still be naked and stoned in his backyard even with a cottage or a town house next door). We’ve tested the cottages in Southeast Seattle, where they are less intrusive than houses, less prolific than tree houses, and only slightly larger than doghouses.

If anything, the council should adjust the rules to allow more cottages in tighter quarters. The proposal before the council only allows cottages on lots over 4,000 square feet. But many of the lots in the Central District and Capitol Hill—where people tend to be more amenable to increased density—are less than 4,000 square feet. The council should allow cottages of 600 square feet on lots over 3,000 feet, too. But who will think of the pot smoking critters in the nude?

Immediately following the full council meeting, the budget committee—which happens to be the entire city council—meets to discuss two items of particular interest. One is the repealing the so-called “head tax,” which taxes business $25 for each employee who relies overwhelmingly on a single-occupancy vehicle to get to work. The money pays for sidewalks and bicycle amenities, but businesses balked and mayoral candidates turned the head tax into a political football. So now the budget committee will discuss its options. The head tax could be repealed by January 1. But now that the mayor’s race is one day from over—praises and thanks—hopefully the council will shelve this fake issue and keep the revenue to build sidewalks in all those neighborhoods that don’t have them, which is a real issue.

Speaking of mayoral races, whoever wins the election will get some money for a mayoral transition team. City council budget committee chair Jean Godden is sponsoring a bill to give $175,000 to assist the new mayor elect’s transition staff and offices. Is that cash intended to grease the wheels for the relationship between the council and new mayor? “That would be my intention,” says Godden.