This Week On PubliCola
A roundup of this week's news.
Tuesday, April 16
Mayor’s Office Edited Ambitious Growth Plan for Seattle to Preserve the Status Quo
PubliCola obtained a copy of an early draft of the city’s Comprehensive Plan update from last August that reveals city planners proposed a far more ambitious plan for growth than the one Mayor Bruce Harrell introduced, almost a year behind schedule, in March. The earlier plan called for far more apartments than the one Harrell released—and called out zoning, explicitly, for maintaining historic patterns of racial and class segregation in Seattle.
Thursday, April 18
Morning Fizz: New City Attorney Hire, Changes Coming at KCRHA, Council Seeks “Reversal” of Pandemic Travel Trends
News from the city attorney’s office, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and the Seattle City Council—which amended the city’s transportation plan to endorse a “reversal” of trends that have reduced commutes downtown, including remote work and 15-minute neighborhoods.
Friday, April 19
Changing Seattle’s Police Hiring Test Won’t Fix SPD’s Recruitment Issues, Test Administrator Says
The head of the commission that oversees police hiring tests pushed back against several of City Council President Sara Nelson’s claims about police hiring and recruitment, including her assertion that ditching the current test—designed to comply with a federal consent decree—would be a quick and fairly simple matter.
Several eyewitnesses provided dramatic accounts of an altercation in which they said former KOMO reporter Jonathan Choe, now a staffer at a right-wing think tank, repeatedly punched a woman who had prevented him from entering a migrant camp, pulling her hair and knocking her to the ground.