Some of your stuff may have been recovered. 

‘Seattle Police bust crime ring

By KING5.com Staff

SEATTLE – A major bust by Seattle police uncovered hundreds of stolen items, from CDs and iPods to computers and medical equipment…….

……MCTF detectives have more than 500 photos for crime victims to view and attempt to identify their stolen property.

Police say if you are a Seattle resident who was a victim of crime where property was stolen, and the crime occurred prior to Dec. 11, 2008, they would like you to view the photographs…..’

http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_011309WAB-crime-r

Congratulations for a year of providing an incredible community resource.  The CD News info goes well beyond the web sphere as we repeat what we know to neighbors.  As I walked around while unable to go to work during the snow, I certainly told people to go here for news.  And, you all know I commented frequently.  Recent cabin fever?  Yes (I got to Christmas dinner YAY).  Contemplative? Not much, I think and do.  Reactive type? Totally.

I must say that the meeting at Garfield that you publicized dealt with some subtexts in the community in a good way, not to say seeing the SNG actually being in our area of the hood…

As you all are the creators of the software, and I fully support you getting ad revenue to support software development, I thought I’d state some things that would make this a more useful site.  This site is a lot more functional than traditional blogger style blogs, but I expect you are always figuring out ways to improve.  Hopefully, others will chime in and you will choose to implement a few enhancements?

I’m basing ideas off of some features of other blogs, which I also have critiques of, but I am cherry picking what works for me.

www.Washblog.com has a feature for those who have a login of noting, not only the number of comments, but NEW comments.  I think this would be helpful if folks are involved in a discussion.  Washblog is a blog of liberals in the pacific northwest.  It tends to move slowly, so I can keep up.

www.Dailykos.com also has the NEW feature, but as it moves way to fast for me, I appreciate the home page for registered users where I can save articles.  I only go there periodically.  But, it saved my sanity when I was stuck at work watching a debate online, comments like, ‘ If your drinking game includes the term “My Friends”, put your glass down NOW’ mitigated missing the group at Central Cinema.  I also appreciate the weekly wrap up. 

So, having a place on my home page to save stories is helpful.

If any of you thoughtful people have a story to tell, dailykos or washblog are good places.  (end pitch)

Finally, I think it might be worthwhile reaching out to people who have come and gone.  I think some trolls really shut down some people and turned off others.  I have heard a few times, ‘I don’t need to subject myself to racism when I live with it every day.’  I cannot state strongly enough how important this is.  Maybe some emails or some surveys that go out by email.  Honest opinions are always good, yes?

I particularly appreciate the youth and comments from long time community people.  The young people are telling us the truth from their perspective.  When I see ‘All I want is to be safe’ written by a young person, I feel like this blog has just started to do its job.  The response was fantastic.  Maybe, and this is a stretch, maybe there is a way to allow people to connect with emails.  I KNOW social networking is complex.  Maybe, we just figure out who is on Facebook or MySpace.  THere is a Central District group on Facebook….

So congratulations Scott and CDguy (scanner reporting par excel lance – and WHO is the winner between Goodwill and QFC on south Broadway anyway?)  Hope your New Year is Happy.

Best regards,
Kathryn

‘…about city’s respnse to snow’

Joel, a Madrona neighbor (hmmmnm wonder if he reads CD News) writes about politics and has one of the most active group of commenters around: they love him, they hate him, they correct his use of English and the trolls abound.

But this column got 168 comments in a little over 7 hours.  Lot’s of people are pretty darn hot about this.  I agree with Joel about Union to 34th or Cherry to 34th….although I seem to remember many days with nada in 1996.

Joel does say that, ‘Instead of the mellow attitude urged by my newspaper on Tuesday morning, I would suggest that the public adopt a demeanor that famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith suggested in dealing with unresponsive bureaucracies: “Cultivate a modest aspect of menace.”‘

And, I would say to Joel that a lot of us have been VERY angry at the city for some time for many inciddents of utter incompetence.  Seems a lot of people want to be in office to grandstand in style on some ‘big’ ideas.  That is not the job of running a municipality,  Running a city is about roads and sewers and cops and REALLY boring stuff like that.  The fact that we are told to call Ron Sims to complain about the buses not running when the buses CAN’T RUN UNTIL THE CITY CLEARS THE D*** STREETS deserves a personal visit to the Mayor’s office by a group of concerned citizens or maybe ummm a lawsuit by small businesses over lost revenues to make them get it right.

See the article, and the any comments at:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/393387_joel24.html

After repeated flooding and one death, an organized community – affected neighbors and a Community Council that would NOT let the city off the hook and that DEMANDED communications via the web and mail, I was pleased to get this email tonite:

From:     [email protected]
Subject:     SPU’s Thaw Preparation Plan
Date:     December 23, 2008 7:19:08 PM PST

Dear Madison Valley Residents,

As the snow begins to melt, Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) would like to
share with you a few things we are doing to prepare for the thaw and
help prevent flooding issues:

SPU crews are in the field preparing our system for the upcoming thaw.
We are clearing inlets of snow and sand at locations where we have had
past ponding and flooding calls during recent weather events.

In Madison Valley, crews are clearing inlets at  

•    east and west of 29th Ave E on Madison St
•    30th Ave E and E John St, including the Madison Sag area

Pumping equipment is staged at E Madison St and 29th Ave E.

SPU is taking these precautions and exercising preventive maintenance to
prepare for any flooding issues that may result due to the snow melt.  

As always, please report any flooding or drainage issues to our 24-Hour
Emergency Response Center at 206-386-1800. 

Thank you.
Elaine

Elaine Yeung
Public Relations Supervisor
Seattle Public Utilities
700 5th Ave, Ste. 4500
PO Box 34018
Seattle, WA 98124-4018
Phone: (206) 684-7823
Fax:      (206) 684-8529
[email protected]
http://www.seattle.gov/util

We have been chit chatting about the worst, so here it is from the end of the following article:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/393116_storm22.html

HEAVY SNOWFALS (sic where is the copy editor?)

About 3:30 I heard the sound of scraping and shoveling, peeked outside and saw a stranger shoveling the driveway.  She said she was helping the people who iive behind me in our town house group.  Seems they got all the way from West Seattle just fine but could not get up our driveway.

No More Virgin Snow

To the rescue, new neighbor from the townhomes across the street with two young strong sons and 3 borrowed snow shovels!

I joined in, and after alot of shoveling and pushing, a break to take the freaked out dog inside, and an attempt to lay down tarp (does not work it wound back around the tires), we had a lightbulb moment and noticed a bag of mulching bark that we spread liberally. 

It was all still very slippery and dicey, with near misses of the posts and another car, but the car is now parked for the duration.  And, besides the leftover bark, there is a 9 cubic foot bag of mulch sitting ready to handle the sheet of ice the drive will be…

Real nice to meet the neighbors.  She can borrow a cup of sugar any time!

I was poking around and found the transscript of the hearing at TT Minor:

http://www.seattleschools.org/area/capacity/TTMinor_Hearing_

Reading the testimony made me tear up, I know many of you and you said it all.

I found it on this blog:

http://saveseattleschools.blogspot.com/

It has a bunch of comments about Nova and Meany, as well, but I don’t see links to transcripts.

Is there any way that we can pelt the State and the Obama people to support public education?  Can the school district just run at a deficit if there is a promise of more funding to fill the gap?  Can folks get together citywide and not let the district pit neighborhoods against each other?

It just seem like prioritizing school assignment to nearby schools would save SO much in the transportation costs.  If closures can be halted or minimized, I’d actually be willing to work on an initiative that makes the district provide elementary education within walking distance, distribution of special programs within public transportation distance of some minimal number of miles, and school assignment heavily prioritized for those in the reference area. 

Does that even make sense?  Or should I go back to ‘working’ at home for my paid job now?

Obama’s BIG plan supposedly got laid out yesterday.  I heard some of it from friends in the east coast and also on the news..  And it supossedly incudes rehab of schools, reform of ‘No Child Left Behind’ ( i.e., unfunded mandates which leave many children behind), but also includes a gauntlet that if states and localities do not use the money, it will not be kept available for them.

All I can find on this is on:

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php

Go to http://change.gov/ and help set priorities for after January 20!

If like Mighigan we can hang on and not make any precipitous decisions until after January 20…

And write the School Board, McDermott, Cantwell, Murray, Gregoire and the guy in Seattle and tell them what you want to happen!

I personally love getting around the neighborhood and seeing good decorations in December.  Before everyone yells at me about the use of electricity, I stand firm on supporting some light in the darkness.  And, the LCDs need to come down in price and do better with the colors.

The best house used to be near MLK School where they made the front windows into Santa’s workshop.  The wife passed away a few years back and the widower sold :-(

On my street, one couple tries to get everyone to decorate.  I usually do a token string of something around the fence as I will not deal with ladders outside.  Since the rest of us are decorating ‘poopers’, these neighbors have up’d the ante this year and have a very colorful and musical display going.  Cheers me up to no end.  

It’s on 27th south of Denny.  I apologize for the crudeness of my camera skills.

Also, the Madison Valley merchants have wrapped the trees with fairy lights.

Anyone else have a good tip?  Maybe for a walkabout in the neighborhood?