Assessing the Assessor, Moore Faces the Urbanists, and Seattle Hates Nightlife
PubliCola's co-founders are back together for this week's episode of Seattle Nice!
By Sandeep Kaushik
(Note from Erica: Ordinarily, I write about what's happening on the podcast myself, but I couldn't beat Sandeep's blurb this week. I recorded this podcast from the back seat of a rental car parked on a dead-end road outside New Orleans during a torrential thunderstorm, so forgive any audible raindrops.)
On this week's Seattle Nice podcast: With David away for a second consecutive week, Erica and Sandeep seek out the inimitable Josh Feit, news editor of the Stranger back in the olden (golden) days, to buffer their conversation with convoluted references to 50-year-old Joni Mitchell records.
We start with the increasingly off-putting saga of King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson, who remains defiant in the face of a unanimous vote by the King County Council (minus the absent Reagan Dunn) urging him to resign over allegations he stalked his ex-partner during their breakup from hell. We ask: Why did the resignation calls take so long, and are we headed for a messy recall? (Hours after we taped this episode on the morning of Friday, June 13, a judge denied Wilson’s legal motion seeking the dismissal of his ex-partner's protection order against him.)
Next up, Josh keys off the announced resignation of Councilmember Cathy Moore to argue that what Moore and her supporters and backers decry as incivility in Council chambers is really just sour grapes about the rising voice of an emerging urbanist majority. But are the urbanists so ascendant, give the status quo nature of the comprehensive plan they're currently debating to death?
Finally, we dig into the implications of Erica’s reporting that the mayor is seeking to expand the city’s powers to shutter “nuisance properties.” Is a crackdown on clubs warranted by recent incidents of gun violence that have occurred outside nightclubs and hookah lounges? Or is this just the latest iteration of a long, pinch-faced tradition in Seattle municipal politics of finger-wagging at—and passing laws to curtail—the city’s nightlife?
Better listen in before a Big Yellow Taxi comes to take Josh and Sandeep away!