After last month’s Madrona Community Council meeting, we wrote about how outgoing President Cynthia Stross believed the council was “in crisis” with declining involvement from the community.

Tomorrow night at 7:15pm at the Shelterhouse in Madrona Playfield, the council will reconvene for its monthly meeting and hold elections for the vacant positions of Treasurer, Vice President and President – as well as discuss the future of the council itself.

The council will also consider all options relating to the future of the MCC, including a revised schedule for meetings and the fate of individual events like Mayfair, the Halloween Party and Neighbor Appreciation Day.

Also on the agenda is a proposal requesting support to include another Madrona block at MLK at East Columbia into the Residential Urban Village Boundary.  Residents want to “open up possibilities for uses on the block and encourage development” on the block.

The news about the perilous state of the MCC sparked plenty of conversation on this blog and elsewhere. Will you be attending tomorrow night’s meeting or participating in the council going forward?

The Halloween celebration and scavenger hunt are underway in Madrona. Here’s some photos we snapped from the festivities.

An intense jack o’lantern outside June Restaurant:

Trick or treaters picking up their scavenger hunt clues at the Madrona playfield shelterhouse:

Treats and goodies supplied by Madrona Moms:

Volunteers from Business Owners of Madrona handing out maps:

Halloween-themed votives at glassybaby:

The folks at Bottlehouse dressed up as a wine flight, with each person as a different wine.

Bobbing for apples at Bottlehouse:

It seemed like there were a lot of people out in the neighborhood, probably helped by the weather cooperating! Did you participate and how did you think it went?

Liz Ellis, the Program Coordinator for SDOT Bridging the Gap Sidewalk Safety Repair, reports that renovations of the sidewalk pavement along E. Union Street between MLK and 34th are scheduled to begin on Monday, November 1. The city will put up no-parking signs for break out and removal of broken pavement.

This date is flexible, though, pending the arrival of a severe rainstorm predicted for early next week, in which case the construction crews would likely be reassigned to drainage response. 

We wrote last week about the plans for sidewalk maintenance along main arterials in the neighborhood, and you’ve probably seen some of the bright green tree preservation signs on trunks along Union. There has been no decision made yet on trees being removed, though Ellis (in a comment on our last post) clarified the two trees under consideration:

There is a maple at 3101 which has substantially heaved the sidewalk. SDOT will evaluate the tree for root pruning before we consider removal. The other tree is east of this on the south side of E Union and is small, stunted, and struggling from being planted right underneath a big leaf maple. 

If you normally park along Union, be aware that starting Monday you might need to look on sidestreets. We’ll update if the weather pushes back construction.

Over 300 families attended last year’s first official Halloween Carnival at St. Therese School, and this year’s should be another fun event for those with younger children who want a daytime activity. 

Held tomorrow, October 30, from 10:30-2:30, the carnival raises funds for school scholarships through games and activities, though admission is free. Planned events include bouncy houses, a fish pond, crafts and more, with a planned visit from the Seattle Fire Department at 11am.

Additionally, Youth in Focus – a great local organization that empowers urban teens through photography – will be offering photo packages of kids in costume for $10-$20. There will also be healthy snacks, hot dogs, popcorn and a raffle for a “Parents Night Out” with a $100 dinner gift certificate and up to 4 hours of babysitting from an experienced nanny.

You can get a discount on tickets by buying them online on the Carnival’s blog (yes, they have a blog!)

Who’s planning to attend tomorrow’s Carnival?

You should start seeing the official poster for Halloween events in Madrona up today and later this week, as the community gears up for Sunday’s activities. 

The Business Owners of Madrona (BOOM) and the Madrona Community Council are coordinating on a Halloween “extravaganza” from 4-6 p.m. The Madrona Playfield shelterhouse will host a party with free treats, as well as handing out the list of clues for a neighborhood scavenger hunt. Don’t forget to turn in your completed scavenger hunt list at the end of the evening!

Many businesses will be handing out candy, with a few special activities at certain stops. Arts Aloft will have a craft for kids to paint, Buggy will host storytime with the Columbia City children’s librarian, Bottlehouse will have “Happy Haunting” with games, drinks and treats for all ages, and St. Clouds will provide seasonal drinks for adults. 

Saturday will be the traditional St. Therese Halloween Carnival, from 10:30-2:30. We’ll have more details about that event in a separate post.

The ever-useful Madrona Moms email list had word last week of rat sightings in the shrubs near the shelterhouse at the Madrona Playground. Charming. 

Seattle Parks and Recreation inspected the area around the shelterhouse last week and found no evidence of rats inhabiting the play area grounds. But given that the rats could be living elsewhere in the area, they still put out traps to see if there’s any hard evidence of rodents in the area.

According to city gardener Nancy Cifuentes, they put out “seven secured stations with bait, four around the perimeter of the shelterhouse and three in the nearby bushes along the tennis court fence.”

Parks and Rec will monitor this week and replace the bait if needed.

Have you seen any rats in the bushes near the Madrona playfield?

If you walk in the neighborhood frequently, you’ve probably stopped paying attention to the cracked pavement, jutting tree roots and uneven sidewalks up and down Union and Cherry Streets and on 34th Avenue – not to mention similar conditions on the residential streets. 

But Liz Ellis, Program Coordinator for SDOT Bridging the Gap Sidewalk Safety Repair, is hoping to do at least something to improve the quality of Madrona’s sidewalks.

“It’s one of several neighborhoods on my radar screen,” Ellis said in a phone call earlier this week. “I know that we need to make things better.”

Ellis identified three specific arterials in Madrona as the most in need of repair – E. Union Street from MLK to 34th Avenue, E. Cherry Street from MLK to 34th Avenue and 34th Avenue between E. Cherry and E. Pike. 

She’s meeting with a crew chief to discuss plans for repairs on E. Union St. as early as this month or in the first few weeks of November, to take advantage of good weather. That street was prioritized because it’s nearest to Madrona K-8 and sees a lot of foot traffic, both from school and from the bus stops. The repairs would include taking up lifted cracks, root pruning and putting in level asphalt patches.

While they would prefer to avoid removing trees, there are two candidates on Union Street for removal, Ellis said. The expensive maintenance of frequent root prunings is difficult with Bridging the Gap’s limited funds, so sometimes tree removal is the most cost-effective way to limit ongoing maintenance of sidewalks.

Long-term, Ellis said she hopes to work with the Madrona community to put together a strategy for improving all the sidewalks in the neighborhood by applying for additional grant funding and identifying priorities for repairs.

Numerous emails from community members asking what can be done about cracked sidewalks indicate there is interest, but Ellis emphasized that the business owners and residents need to work together with SDOT on a focused sidewalk repair project. In other neighborhoods like Madison Park, residents have applied for Neighborhood Street Funds and leveraged funds from SDOT’s Sidewalk Safety Repair Program and private contributions.

Which sidewalks do you think are priorities for repair? What do you think is the best way to coordinate that maintenance and funding?

The Madrona Beach restoration continues to move forward now that the busy summer beach season is done. The next big push is to begin planting the new plants and vegetation.

The Madrona Beach Restoration Committee is asking for volunteers to come help out at a Planting Party on Sunday, October 24, from 9 am to noon. Participants should bring gloves and any shovels, trowels or plastic buckets to move dirt that they can bring. Some basic tools, coffee, water and treats will be provided.

At the last work party, back in August, volunteers cleared the streambed to reveal the colorful tiles below. Also forthcoming is a specially designed log for playing, which is slated to be installed on site this fall.

A bit late on this today, but from 3-5pm the Molly Moon’s ice cream truck will be in front of Buggy on 34th Ave.

Everything in the shop will be 10% off all day to celebrate the store’s 3rd anniversary. Buggy originally opened on Beacon Hill in 2007 before moving to Madrona in summer of 2009. 

The truck always seems to be doing good business whenever we walk by – who has checked it out during the almost weekly Buggy stops?

While we were originally told the Madrona laundromat remodeling wouldn’t start until today, the facility has been closed with brown paper over the windows since Monday. The signs on the windows say the grand re-opening will be this Saturday, October 16.

Today on our walk to the bus it was hard to miss two massive trucks delivering the new high-efficiency washers and dryers. So it looks like the renovations are on track – we’ll keep an eye out on the process this week.